[meteorite-list] Meteorite Auction Days Numbered?

[Eric Wichman]

The writing has been on the wall for a while now. Hopefully I'm wrong... 
With all the fuss over the years with suspect and obvious fake 
meteorites on Ebay, misleading and incorrect information and 
identification of terrestrial stones claimed as meteorites by 
inexperienced folks trying to make a quick buck on that lava rock they 
found in their driveway "that wasn't there yesterday". Problems of 
international shipping and the tightening of export laws in other 
countries which govern, or at least try to govern the exportation of 
meteorites.

Ebay is starting to take measures to prohibit meteorite sales on their 
"international" sites, as per a recent post on the Met-List a little 
while ago. (I'm assuming some dealers used to list items internationally 
on multiple international Ebay sites like others have, but now Ebay is 
seemingly prohibiting this practice. Hopefully this is not a sign of 
things to come.)

Recent posts about suspect Lunar meteorites, and the numerous other 
"suspect" and supposed meteorites that get listed on Ebay, the countless 
emails from meteorite dealers to Ebay about apparent and obviously 
fraudulent Ebay auctions featuring fake meteorites doesn't really help. 
This coupled with the ambiguous and non-standard international export 
and import laws in other countries regarding meteorites, I think selling 
meteorites on Ebay might become a thing of the past. There are too many 
other products with much less hassle and risk  for Ebay to allow to be 
listed, without dealing with the liability of the possibility of suspect 
and or blatantly fraudulent meteorite auctions which might cause buyers 
undo loss, or inadvertent proliferation of non-meteoritic material 
throughout the meteorite community. This causes much confusion on what a 
meteorite really looks like, and identification of meteorites by 
psuedo-experts, and backyard meteorite hunters who quickly list their 
"find" on Ebay hurts the community, and ultimately the science. Not that 
Ebay cares about that, but if any of these things increase their risk, 
and meteorites become too much of a liability, or it costs them too much 
money to wade through the possible legal and/or business policy disputes 
that arise from meteorite listings, then they would have no reason to 
continue to allow meteorites to be listed.

Meteorite auction days on Ebay might just be numbered.

Regards,
Eric