The crater is erroneously named - craters are formed by meteorites, not meteors - but it is spectacular nonetheless: the best preserved impact crater in the world and something of a mecca for meteorite enthusiasts. It would long ago have disintegrated, or, as we say, terrestrialized.Canyon Diablo Iron Meteorite: A 1,179-gram specimen of the Canyon Diablo iron meteorite, found at the famous impact site, Meteor Crater, near Winslow, Arizona. That asteroid hit the Earth 60 million years ago. "Here again," explains Twelker, " the problem is one of instability. You'd be better off saving up to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. If, however, a dealer ever tries to sell you a hunk of it (marketing slogan: "The Dinosaurs' Loss, Your Gain!"), walk away. Judging by that crater's size, the asteroid would have been some six miles in diameter. Geophysicists think its impact site may have been what today is the Chicxulub crater, off the Yucatan Peninsula. What meteorite could be considered the most collectible one ever to visit Earth?Ī case could be made for the rock whose impact is believed to have taken out the dinosaurs. "But I don't recommend it for the ordinary person." "The difference between what you pay and what you later can sell for is substantial," he says, "unless you manage to buy at dealer price and sell at retail." Certain collectors, he says, do quite well. Then, too, transaction costs can erode profits. "You've got to be good at managing the instability problem, or else you've got lumps of rust at the end of your investment period." But an investor would have to know how to care for what he buys, given the fact that so many space rocks are subject to decay. "For some people they could be," he says, "if you know what you're doing." Prices have gone up consistently since he started his website in 1995, he says. "First-blush stuff I tend to steer away from." There's been some dirt from the area on eBay but whether or not it's real is the next question." He prefers not to buy hot stuff. Asked if any genuine fragments of it have come to market yet, Twelker replies, "None that I'm aware of. For example, the Russian meteorite right now is hot. The reason for the rock-bottom price? "There's a huge supply of them-probably thousands of tons" from a deposit in northwest Africa. Twelker's site has one group of meteorites that go for $1.50 each with every order of $20 or more. "I have a very low opinion of eBay," he says.įor legitimate meteorites, a variety of factors determine price, starting with supply and demand. "You can buy a rock from some guy's driveway if you're not careful." According to him, eBay is "a good place" to get stuck with a driveway rock. But the market is replete with unscrupulous dealers, he warns. "They're just pieces of paper"-an attestation by a dealer that a meteorite is real. "The certificates you get?" says Twelker. ![]() Whereas the gem industry has laboratories like the Gem Institute of America that will examine and certify a gem, there's nothing comparable to that for meteorites. The market for meteorites, he says, "is a bit like the Wild West." His fellow dealers he calls "a bunch of pirates." No independent authority guarantees a space rock's authenticity. All you have to go on, as an amateur, is the reputation of the seller. How do you know if what you're buying is really a meteorite? You don't, says Twelker. One variety, found in China, "just rusts into a pile of oozing mush." Another, from Kansas, sports beautiful crystals but it, too, may rust and the crystals pop out. On Earth some meteorites are more unstable than others, he says. If you put your space rock on your coffee table, it may disintegrate or rust." "The consumer needs to understand that these rocks come from space," says Eric Twelker, founder and proprietor of The Meteorite Market, oldest such marketplace on the Internet. Worse, you can buy a bona fide meteorite, and, by failing to show it proper care, see it disintegrate into stardust before your very eyes. You can be hoodwinked by unscrupulous meteorite dealers. Want one? Experts on buying, selling and collecting interstellar rocks advise caution. Even small fragments, they say, could be worth thousands of dollars. 19, 2013 - Meteorite hunters are converging on Chelyabinsk, Russia, seeking pieces of a space rock that exploded above that city last week, injuring 1,200 people.
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