[meteorite-list] Shirokovsky

Fri Aug 19 21:51:27 EDT 2011

Adam wrote:

"I see Shirokovsky as being off topic"

I agree and would keep my mouth shut iof I thought it were an innocent 
scam that was over and reparations made.

Since I agree with Adam as such this will be my only post, since what 
is on topic, interestingly, is clarifying that it is not a 
*meteorwrong*..   - a meteorwrong by most definitions is natural 
material than can be confused with an authentic meteorite out in the 
field.  This is not that case, this is the case of the apple colored 
moldavites faked on eBay.  This is a *PSEUDOMETEORITE* and that term is 
doing it a favor, and we should IMO all be very clear about that for 
the mutual benefit of all of our collections and future material that 
could enter them.

Shirokovsky may elicit the Pavlovian Dogs salivation in collectors that 
haven't been soiled by it.  You know - save that salivation for the 
real stuff, Shirokovsky isn't even in the category of a blow-up 
meteorite doll.  There is nothing technologically interesting about 
Shirokovsky, the matrix is nothing better than you can find in a cheap 
faux bead shop, and why people think it would have an etch pattern is 
beyond me.  The only reason to have it is because when you drive by an 
accident on the highway and see an accident with blood and guts, you 
have to stop and cause everyone else a traffic jam as you gawk.  And 
then you have to tell everyone else, yes, look I have a piece of that 
corpse on the road, look at me!

I wouldn't feel this way at all if the story were all closed and those 
who have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars (yes, the amount is 
correct) were ok and the crooks in jail. But the collective memory 
seems to mean nothing even if we can learn from our past. Everything 
would be cool in the collectible category if there were a fixed amount 
of Shirokovsky out there.

It is not all accounted for and it gives someone else the idea of 
manufacturing other meteorites; why, instead of getting locked up for 
stealing from several collectors and causing all kinds of business 
heartache beyond the active imagination of many listmembers, the 
message is clear.  Make a Shitpkovsky fake, if you get caught, be 
nowhere to be found and burn the people who trusted you, cause a great 
deal of pollutuion that everyone else has to clean up (the equivalent 
of the Exxon Valdez, and we all cleaned it up), and then appear 10 
years later selling more of it like war memorabilia from the dark side 
and getting people to actually argue it is a good thing to have in 
collections.

Huuumpt.  I still remember being at a function 3 years ago where the 
big meteorite dealer insisted to an ignorant crowd that his many 
Shirokovsky pseudometeorites.  He sold them for $25/g and many just 
three years ago painted me as someone who didn't know since he was the 
expert (ha).

Here's what the serious problem is: the material was all controlled 
before by the dealer terrorists and collector rapists.  If you bought a 
piece of this suckerite from one of the original good faith dealers, 
you did a fine thing to help bail them out and had the cute thing to 
discuss it in a charitable show and tell.  But - Now assigning a 
collection value to new material all you are doing is having money 
chase the masses that were never cut.  And as we all know, when money 
chases, money gets.  And - guess where this new material is coming from?

Kindest wishes
Doug

-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Hupe <raremeteorites at yahoo.com>
To: Adam <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Fri, Aug 19, 2011 5:38 pm
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Shirokovsky

I guess collecting artifacts has made me leery about fakes. Get caught 
with one
fake artifact and it will put your entire collection in question.  It 
is best to
get artifacts papered and destroy any that have been "killed" by an 
independent
authenticator. I see Shirokovsky as being off topic since it is not a 
meteorite
and is was only produced in order to defraud honest collectors out of 
their hard
earned money. 

If you want a piece of a recycled old Ford motor block in your 
collection, that
is your business.  To me, it is garbage and so are the people who 
produced it!

Adam

----- Original Message -----
From: Bernd V. Pauli <bernd.pauli at paulinet.de>
To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Cc:
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2011 1:50 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Shirokovsky

Hello All,

Shirokovsky is terrestrial, it is a pseudo-meteorite, it is man-made!

- does not contain typical accessory phases of stony-iron meteorites
- accessory phases completely atypical
- Olivine has a terrestrial oxygen isotopic composition
- Pt/Ir ratio similar to that of terrestrial Cu-Ni ore deposits
- has never been in space (noble gases no cosmic component!)
- absence of cosmic-ray tracks corroborates noble gas study results (=
bestätigen)
- Olivine TL spectra similar to terrestrial peridotites

Conclusion: Shirokovsky is manufactured, man-made!

As for its nickel contents, see also the entry in the (online) Met.Bull.

... and, yes, I have a thin 2.7 gr slice of Shirokovsky with 
translucent
olivines.
I got that pseudo-pallasite in 2003 from Eric Olson. It doesn't pollute 
my
collection but it sure looks a bit "pale-faced" when sitting next to a 
genuine
pallasite like Esquel, Brenham, Admire, etc.

Cheers,

Bernd

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