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Featured Monthly Articles

Accretion Desk by Martin Horejsi

Jim’s Fragments by Jim Tobin

Meteorite Market Trends by Michael Blood

Bob’s Findings by Robert Verish

IMCA Insights by The IMCA Team

Micro Visions by John Kashuba

Galactic Lore by Mike Gilmer

Meteorite Calendar by Anne Black

Meteorite of the Month by Michael Johnson

Tektite of the Month by Editor

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Witnessed Fall: Borkut, Ukraine by Martin Horejsi

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An October 1852 Witnessed Fall: Borkut, Ukraine The Borkut Meateorite: More Chondrite, Less Fat

Early comparisons of the Borkut meteorite to others of the time led some scientists to conclude that Borkut had a higher chondrite to matrix ratio.

This uncut face of Borkut shows the chondrule-rich landscape, yet not unlike a conglomerate sedimentary rock found here on earth. How about that big pebble!

According to the few reports of the fall of the Borkut meteorite, at around 3:00 in the afternoon, a single stone fell from the sky burying itself about two feet into the ground and described as still warm when recovered.

It weighed a total of 12 Vienna pounds, with the largest of the broken pieces toping the scales of the day at seven Vienna pounds and 6 1/4 loths. The Catalogue of Meteorites lists the TKW of Borkut as 7kg or 15 pounds 6.4 ounces for us Americans. The blade of a saw turns spheres into circles.

Spend some time staring at this cut face. The longer you look, the more chondrules and features you will see. Notice the arc of broken white chondrule in the lower left.

Or the large radial olivine-colored chondrule in the lower right.

Or the white silicate armor surrounding the inclusion in the upper right.

The Catalogue of Meteorites (2000) lists Borkut as an single 7kg stone L5 chondrite that fell on October 13, 1852. The place of fall is Zakarpatska Province, Ukraine. However the 1923 edition of the Catalogue by George Prior lists the location of the Borkut fall as Marmoros, Ruthenia, Czechoslovakia.

And if that discrepancy is not enough, there was a brief note in Meteoritics & Planetary Science (Vol. 36, No. 9, Supplement , 2001) that lists Borkut as from Hungary citing the 1985 Catalogue of Meteorites as the reference. Landing on a world that was enlightened about meteorites barely half a century earlier, Borkut was an important sample for its day. Early studies of Borkut by Tschermak and others noted the richness of the chondrules secured in a somewhat limited matrix.

For me, it is pieces such as this Borkut that show a the complexity of chondrule/matrix interaction furthering the confusion about the initial formation of the visible geology of the early solar system. The microphotographs above and below were taken by Gustav Tschermak von Seysenegg and published in 1885 in work titled Die mikroskopische Beschaf f enheit der Meteoriten, later republished in English in a tome titled The Microscopic Properties of Meteorites, Vol. 4, No. 6 (Smithsonian Contributions to Astrophysics, Washington, D.C., 1964).

Tschermak’s words, translated by Translation by J.A. Wood and E.M. Wood are as follows:

Part of a porphyritic chondrule in the chondrite Borkut; olivine crystals in a brown glass matrix. Much of this glass is enclosed by the olivine crystals. The upper crystal seems to have been sectioned parallel to {100} so that the sharp edge (021) Ð (0?21) is presented. The large glass inclusion in its center seems to fill a negative crystal. Other glass inclusions are also visible and, although incomplete, suggest a lamellar structure. Below is a larger crystal, bounded by distinct crystal faces.

It is penetrated by several parallel tabular glass inclusions, which give it a chambered character. To the left is an olivine crystal with very few inclusions. A double chondrule in the chondrite Borkut. The smaller part is a monosomatic compartmented olivine chondrule with a pale transparent shell; translucent material fills the space between olivine plates.

The large chondrule, which partly encloses the small one, is of the same character; both go to extinction simultaneously. Borkut is fragile and tends to disintegrate during sectioning, so that the double chondrule is partially separated from its original matrix.

(Again, translation by J.A. Wood and E.M. Wood) With the Tom Phillips faux antique scale cube for comparison, it is easy to see the large size of that odd rock fragment just to the right of the broken face which is just to the right of the cube.

The plethora of chondrules has led one observer to compare the spheres to grapes. Although Borkut did not fall in a vineyard like other meteorites, I cannot get that simile out of my mind when I look at the grapes, err, I mean chondrules in Borkut.

Is this what crust looks like on Borkut? It’s hard to tell because the surface of Borkut is unlike most other meteorites.

Normally the matrix holding the chondrules makes a nice melted surface with chondrules bubbling up through the velvety sheen.

However Borkut, being mostly chondrules, reacted to the atmosphere’s attack differently. At least that is my scenario when assuming that the exterior of Borkut pictured above represents a sample of fusion crust. About six years ago, the wonderful sample of Brokut made its way from the Jim Schwade collection into mine.

About 11 years before that, the specimen moved from the J. Schmutzler collection into Jim’s.

Oddly, the collection history of my Borkut piece is good knowledge to have as a collector of historic stones. What’s odd you might ask? Simply the fact that of Borkut’s 158 years on this planet thus far, I can only account for about 10% of its time on earth. So Borkut, where have you been hiding?

Until next time….

The Accretion Desk welcomes all comments and f eedback. [email protected]

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Vacation 2010 by Jim Tobin

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On Vacation

Soon we’ll be off on vacation. We thought hard about where to go and what we wanted to do this year. And the end of all that thought was summed up in the word “veg” we are just going to go out and sit all day if we want and do nothing. With all the changing rules about where you can hunt and where you will get in trouble if you try to hunt, we decided to just plop ourselves down in a spot that would be ok for meteorite hunting if we wanted to do some and would be good for astronomy during the nights.

So we will be sitting at Franconia. We have hunted here before with limited success. We have found both the irons and the stones and had a lot of fun but it can be frustrating now after all the hunting that has gone on here. We know they are still out there but it is a big area.

We have set up telescopes at Franconia before and it is dark enough to see a large number of objects. The Moon is not going to be in a very favorable state for deep sky work this week but since lunar photography is what I want to do the first couple evenings should be great. The planet Jupiter will also be bright and high so we can watch the moons cross and do some fine work observing the planet.

The new season of Meteorite Men will be starting this November and I am really looking forward to that. I am excited for Geoff and Steve this is a wonderful time for them. I am sure that years from now these will be some of the most treasured memories related to meteorites that they will have. Personally, I am looking forward to seeing where they go on this season.

After a lot of procrastination I am getting my garage cleaned up. I have my work tables set up and my wife can get back to doing her stain glass work and I can sneak in and do mine too. I have my lapidary equipment on another long table. Spread out now it is nice to have room to work and to keep everything together. I was handicapped by having piles of material here and there all disorganized. It is great to have a little control of the inventory.

As you can see we have got the new look for the magazine completed. Paul is the wizard there. I check things out as a tester and help with the color scheme decisions and layout but the coding is all his. He always does a great job of getting things working really well.

The new format also lets us make the entire history of issues searchable and once all the back issues are reformatted it will be the resource that we had originally envisioned. But, the capacity just was not around to make it happen till recently. Searching through the back issues has admittedly always been a pain, but soon it will be a delight we hope.

I’ve had a new laptop for a few months and never really given it a good workout. I think that will change this week. I loaded some astronomy software onto it and I expect to do some image processing while we are relaxing during the days. We will not be doing any deep sky photography this trip but I am sure I will still take a lot of pictures. We will have a great vacation summary to till next month so stay tuned. Hopefully we will have found a few meteorites and had a great adventure again.

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Meteorite Market Trends by Michael Blood

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This Month’s Meteorite Market Trends

by Michael Blood

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IMCA Insights – October 2010 by IMCA TEAM

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IMCA Insights – October 2010 Visit at the UoA Electron Microprobe Laboratory by Anne Black

Quite a while ago Dolores Hill (Senior Research Specialist, Lunar and Planetary Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona) asked me if she could borrow some thin-sections of Almahata Sitta from me for a very important occasion. Of course, she could! In fact I had asked my favorite thin-section maker to double-polish but leave some thin-sections uncovered so they could be used for research. And I had just received the first batch.

Then about a month ago, Dolores finally told me what that big occasion was: the University had finally received their brand new, cutting-edge, Electron Microprobe. It had taken a long time, but it was there, and had been installed and tested by a couple of French technicians (incidentally, I learned that the best Electron Microprobes are made in France). The Lunar and Planetary Lab wanted to celebrate the event, and have an official inauguration and ribbon-cutting ceremony; and I was invited. And my thin-sections would be used for the "First Beam" because of Almahata Sitta's connection with Tucson.

The big day was Friday September 24. When I arrived, the Lab was already crowded, I met there Dr. Michael J. Drake, Director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Dr. Kenneth Domanik, Manager of the Electron Microprobe Laboratory, Dr. Dante Lauretta, Dolores Hill, and of course Rik Hill, Richard Kowalski (who discovered Almahata Sitta when it was still a meteor, and known as 2008 TC3), and many others. The huge machine was ready and decorated with a large red bow; the big cylinder in the middle is the electron gun, the smaller tubes coming out at angles are the individual spectrometers, and the bow actually covers the airlock where the sample is inserted.

Dr. Domanik and Dr. Drake prompt ly cut t he ribbon and Dr. Domanik set t led down t o show us what it could do Phot o court esy of Full Moon Phot ography Lef t t o right : Dr. Domanik, Maria Haas, Dr. Drake, Dr. Dant e Lauret t a, Anne Black Phot o court esy of Full Moon Phot ography

In case you don't know how a microprobe works, I will quote from the information kindly provided by Dolores Hill: "In an electron microprobe, a solid sample (on a thin-section) is bombarded with a focused beam of high energy electrons. This produces a variety of different types of interactions between the beam of electrons and the atoms in the sample. The result is a chemical analysis of the selected spots on the sample". For a more technical and complete explanation, please go to the following PDF files, kindly provided by Dolores Hill:

FirstElectronBeam.pdf

HowDoesItWork.pdf

QuantitativeAnalysis.pdf

QualitativeAnalysis.pdf

Phot o by Anne Black

From a lay-person's point of view, there are 4 screens beside the microprobe proper, the user types in the various commands on a keyboard, and navigates around the thin-section with a joy-stick and a few knobs on another board. And Dr. Domanik took us on a tour of a thin-section of EL6 Almahata Sitta. First we saw a relict chondrule, black and white, and polarized. EL6 Almahat a Sit t a Chondrule in black and whit e Phot o by Dr. Domanik

Phot o by Dr. Domanik

Then on to a tiny sliver of the crust. Dr. Domanik asked for the composition of a tiny light grey dot, and the machine promptly responded on another screen with the whole composition broken down in colorful peaks and valleys. What was it? Olivine. Then to two other intriguing stick-like, very dark masses, again the response came up quickly: Graphite. Phot o by Dr. Domanik

Phot o by Dr. Domanik

For a more detailed, and more scientific, explanation, provided by Dolores Hill, go to: AlmahataSittaEL6.pdf

Then we went on to a thin-section of one of the ureilite lithology of Almahata Sitta, and Dr. Domanik demonstrated another function of the microprobe, X-ray mapping. He asked for the distribution of several chemical elements, and the machine promptly responded with colorful maps, each one showing the location of one of the elements being searched. Again more detailed and scientific information is available here: AlmahataSittaURE.pdf

He then repeated the search on a thin-section of the Los Angeles meteorite. Not only do the "maps", pictured below show the presence or absence of the element being searched, but variations in the color also indicate how prevalent that mineral is, a little to a lot. A very precise and thorough analysis, however that does take longer for the machine to produce, and this was an example Dr. Domanik had prepared. More detailed information here: LosAngeles.pdf

A t hin sect ion of t he Los Angeles shergot t it e under t he microprobe The Open House and Inauguration was officially from 4 to 7 pm but we were all listening and watching until way past 7; in fact few of us even took the time to nibble on the finger-food kindly provided by the University. Sorry Dolores, but some of us, and mostly me don't get very often the occasion to look at an electron microprobe close-up and personal.

If you want to know more about the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona, please look at: AboutTheLab.pdf

As for me, I am delighted I came. Thank you very much to the whole Laboratory team for the kind invitation.

Lef t t o right : Dr. Drake, Richard Kowalski, Alex Gibbs, Rik Hill, Dolores Hill, Anne Black, Amy Phillips Phot o court esy of Full Moon Phot ography

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Bill Cassidy and the Campo del Cielo Strewn Field (1960′s) by Robert Verish

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Bill Cassidy shares some of his pictures f rom the Campo del Cielo strewn f ield taken in the 1960′s.

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Ted Bunch -- Ramon (?) -- Luisa Villar -- Dan Milton -- Bill Cassidy -- Truman Kohman

During a trip to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last week, I stopped-in at University of Pitt to pay a visit to Professor Emeritus Bill Cassidy. It was a treat to talk to him about his work in the early days with the Japanese in Antarctica. But it was an added treat when Bill started to discuss his even earlier work in the Southern Hemisphere – his collaboration with the Argentine researchers at the Campo del Cielo strewn field in the 1960s. The results of all of this field work are well-published. I’ve listed them below at the end of this article under “Academic References”. You can find these on-line and published in the “Supplement” issue (Vol. 45, 2010 July) of the Meteoritical Society journal, Meteoritics & Planetary Sciences (M&PS).

Here are some images of pictures taken “from the field” which Bill Cassidy shared with me: Argentinian field workers dragging up a large Campo del Cielo iron meteorite from a trench in "Crater No. 6" A unique view of an iron meteorite being extracted from a trench which has exposed a penetration funnel.

A crane pulls up a monster Campo del Cielo iron meteorite from "Crater No. 13" This was supposed to be a "posed picture" of the recovered meteorite with the mayor of the local village in the Campo del Cielo strewn field, but several families with their children arrived at the same time.

Bill Cassidy on the left and the author on the right. Myself looking at the Bill Cassidy Campo iron meteorite in a wooden crate.

A closer look at the iron meteorite that Bill Cassidy and team recovered at the Campo del Cielo crater field

I wish I could have spent more time talking with Bill Cassidy, but I had pressing family matters to attend, and Bill had to return to his current project, which is no surprise that the topic is “impact- stressed” iron meteorites from the craters in the Campo del Cielo strewn field in Argentina.

Ref erences:

• Link to the website with an abstract for the referenced journal: Meteorites and Craters of Campo del Cielo, Argentina Meteorites and Craters of Campo del Cielo, Argentina(pp. 1055-1064) William A. Cassidy, Luisa M. Villar, Theodore E. Bunch, Truman P. Kohman, Daniel J. Milton Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1716081

• Link to a website with a reprint of Buchwald’s HISTORY AND SCIENCE OF THE CAMPO DEL CIELO METEORITE

The website “quotes” from:

The Handbook of Iron Meteorites Their History, Distribution, Composition and Structure Volume 2 by Vagn F. Buchwald

Department of Metallury, Technical University, Lyngby, Denmark Published for the Center for Meteorite Studies, Arizona State University By the University of California Press Berkeley • Los Angeles • London

Academic Ref erences:

1. Bunch, T. E., Cassidy, W. A., Impact-induced deformation in Campo del Cielo meteorite. French, B.M. and Short, N.M., eds., Shock Metamorphism of Natural Materials, Mono Book Corp., Baltimore, MD, pp. 601-612. 1968. 2. Cassidy W.A., Renard, M. L., Discovering research value in the Campo del Cielo, Argentina, meteorite craters. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, v. 31, pp. 433-448. 1996. 3. Cassidy, W. A., Wright, S. P., Small impact craters in Argentine loess: A step-up from modeling experiments, Impact Cratering Workshop, pp. 8004. 2003. 4. Cassidy, W. A., Field investigations at Campo Del Cielo, Argentina. Unpublished Research Proposal, University of Pittsburgh, 31 p. 1973. 5. Cassidy, W. A., A small meteorite crater: Structural details. Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 76, pp. 3896-3912. 1971. 6. Cassidy, W. A., Meteorite impact craters at Campo del Cielo, Argentina. French, B.M. and Short, N.M., eds., Shock Metamorphism of Natural Materials, Mono Book Corp., Baltimore, MD, pp. 117-128. 1968. 7. Cassidy, W. A., Villar, L.M., Bunch, T.E., Kohman, T.P. and Milton,D.J., Meteorites and craters of Campo del Cielo, Argentina. Science, v. 149, pp. 1055-1064. 1965. 8. Traub, S. G., Cassidy, W. A., Alteration of Campo Del Cielo soil by meteorite impact: Implications for the surface of Mars (abstract). Lunar and Planatary Science XX, pp. 1128-1129. 1989.

My previous articles can be found *HERE*

For for more information, please contact me by email: Bolide*chaser

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NWA 5742 Howardite by John Kashuba

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It’s worth a few minutes to peruse a howardite just for the textures – viewing it in hand or with a loupe or ‘scope like we do here. Howardites are the compacted soil of the asteroid Vesta. They are a mixture of fragmented rock that has been excavated – from both shallow and deep – mixed and lithified by impacts. Breccias. Some are highly shocked overall. Those might take a good polish but for our purposes can look dark and unappealing up close. This one has a clean appearance.

The thin section was made from this two and a half gram part slice of NWA 5742. Pretty fresh material. With light behind the thin section we see mineral fragments in generally light colors and some darker clasts. The clast sticking out of the curved edge at ten o’clock was cut from the bump on the edge of the slice seen in the picture above. The thin section is from the middle of the slice. The slice was three millimeters thick. Up closer we see that most of the mineral fragments are angular.

This field is three millimeters wide. We see smaller and smaller fragments. Ultimately they are so fine that they don’t let light through and appear as dark matrix. Now, let’s look at some clasts. This clast shows in the overall TS picture as a dark oval near the center of the bottom third. Here we see it in reflected and transmitted light. It is mostly needles and well shocked. Each frame is 1.5 mm wide.

This is the 10 o’clock bump. Obviously a different lithology from its surroundings. Reflected light on left and combined reflected and crossed polars on the right. Each frame is 2.2 mm wide.

This 3 mm wide field contains several clasts set in the “normal” groundmass. Reflected light. Below is the same field in combined reflected light and transmitted cross polarized light. Combined reflected light and transmitted crossed polar light view of the same 3 mm wide field shown above.

These two bits of metal (one above the other) are brilliantly shiny in other light. Here we see they’ve stained a little of their surroundings. They are about 0.2 mm across. They are the only metal I saw on this slide. And last, a pretty picture with crossed polars. This mineral fragment is about 0.4 mm wide.

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A Brief History of the Saharan Gold Rush of Meteorites by Michael Gilmer

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(photo - Remote open desert, credit Courtney Walker)

- Prologue

The term “Saharan Gold Rush” (or “Saharan Rush” or “NWA Gold Rush”) is generally used to describe a period of time from the mid 1990′s to the first few years of the 21st century. It was a period that spanned about 10 years and is now widely considered to be concluded. During this period, a vast flood of meteorites began to pour out of the Saharan desert through Morocco into the hands of European and Western dealers. Previously, meteorites were much more scarce and types like howardites were considered to be rare exotics beyond the reach of many private collectors. The Saharan Gold Rush flooded the marketplace with numerous rare types and thousands of unclassified meteorites of all descriptions. The sudden influx of new material upset the balance between the old-guard dealers, well-heeled collectors, and museums. Suddenly, a collector operating on a small budget could afford to buy such luxuries as howardites, carbonaceous chondrites, and eventually planetaries. Museums and institutions opened their cabinets and traded pieces of rare historical falls to acquire the new exotics from the hot deserts of Northwest Africa.

During all of this sudden upset and activity amongst meteorite collectors and dealers, the internet rose to prominence and further altered the landscape of the marketplace. The widening availability of the internet to distant locales like Morocco, opened up direct lines of communication between the Moroccan meteorite sources and the buyers all across the planet. Meteorites with NWA numbers began to out-number meteorites with names, and collectors could swell their cabinets by patrolling eBay for the latest new offerings from the deserts. The Saharan Gold Rush ultimately resulted in total upheaval of the global meteorite market and it was inarguably a bounty of material for collectors, dealers and institutions alike. We will now examine the timeline and key events of this period and how it has effected the marketplace of today and the future.

- Genesis

It is hard to pin down an exact time and place that triggered the Saharan Rush. We do know that the first meteorites to be discovered in the Sahara were found by local tribesmen and desert nomads. These people were often of Arabic, Moroccan, Berber, Bedouin, or Tuareg descent and some of them are intimately familiar with the vast deserts of Northwest Africa that are collectively called the Saharan Desert. Technically speaking, the Saharan desert stretches across the boundaries of several nations, including Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Niger, Mali, Sudan, Libya and Egypt. The majority of meteorites coming out of the deserts pass through Morocco and end up with the designation of “NWA” or “unclassified NWA” by the Nomenclature Committee (NonCom) of the Meteoritical Society. This formal nomenclature is widely used in the world of private collectors and dealers, and these meteorites are generally referred to as “NWA” regardless of where they originated in the Sahara.

Western and European fossil hunters had a long presence in Morocco and Mauritania because this same geographic area also holds rich deposits of fossils, minerals, and prehistoric human artifacts. When the nomads began bringing back unusual black rocks from the open desert, some of the rock and fossil dealers took notice. Word soon spread across the region that foreign dealers would pay the “handsome sum” of pennies or nickels per gram for these heavy, black rocks. The nomads and desert dwellers then started to actively look for these stones and they discovered that the remote desert was literally sprinkled with distinctive and potentially-valuable meteorites. Because the Saharan desert climate is ideal for preserving meteorites, there were tens of thousands of years worth of fallen meteorites laying exposed in the sand dunes and on the desert pavement. As mineral, fossil, and artifact stocks began to dwindle, profit-minded dealers began to focus on meteorite recovery, and they informed their local partners about identifying meteorites and telling them apart from terrestrial material. This resulted in a literal flood of new meteorites emerging from the Sahara and the nomads brought them out by the sack and camel-load. The bounty included hundreds of common chondrites and dozens of new examples of rare types, including Lunar and Martian meteorites.

Laboratories and institutions began receiving increasing numbers of requests for analysis on new Saharan material. Museum curators were bombarded with trade requests, offering to exchange the new desert exotics for historical meteorite specimens. The very first meteorite dealers and wholesalers now had a golden opportunity to make a handsome profit and to grow their own collections for pennies on the dollar. Unclassified meteorites could be purchased directly from Moroccan traders for very low prices, and once formally analyzed in the West, these same meteorites would fetch a considerable profit on the retail collector market. The smell of money began to waft across the desert dunes, and the Saharan Gold Rush started in earnest.

In order to avoid paying full retail price on these new desert meteorites, dealers and collectors had to deal directly with their Moroccan counterparts. The local Moroccans would receive the new meteorites from their partners who routinely combed the remote areas of the desert during their travels. Much of this trading activity centered around the Moroccan city of Erfoud, not far from the Algerian border. These meteorites would then be made available, at a mark-up, from the wholesalers in local markets and homes in places like Erfoud and Rissani.

At first, the internet was not widely available in Morocco or the Sahara, so word of these offerings did not spread widely to the global marketplace. The only Moroccans with access to the internet during the beginnings of the Gold Rush were the wealthy-individuals or city dwellers, so this limited the locals’ ability to market goods to their full potential. Banking, shipping, and financial services in Morocco (and across the Sahara) were not closely tied to foreign services during the early stages of the Rush, so these limitations also helped keep the meteorite trading concentrated in a hands of a few foreign dealers and well-connected local wholesalers. PayPal was not accepted in Morocco (and still is not), USPS did not have parcel service to Morocco, and the only expedient way to transfer funds between a foreign buyer and a Moroccan seller was via direct bank to bank wire-transfer. Indeed, many of these limitations are still in place and are only recently beginning to be lifted. All of these factors tilted the playing field of the meteorite marketplace to the foreign dealers who had ready access to an audience of clients and potential buyers.

The Western and European dealers did not have direct access to the remote areas of the desert where the meteorites were found, and the Moroccans did not have easy access to the global marketplace of buyers. So an alliance of necessity was formed, and it was a sometimes contentious one, between the foreign dealers and the local Moroccan traders. This status-quo was maintained, in part by necessity and in part by dealer design, throughout the majority of the Saharan Rush, and the eventual shattering of this status-quo would signal the beginning of the end for the flood of cheap, new meteorites from the deserts. (photo - marketplace in Marrakech Morocco, credit Bryce Edwards)

- The Peak

As the flow of meteorites grew into the many hundreds, the scientific establishment and ambitious private individuals began to take notice of the source of these new meteorites. Expeditions were launched by universities, governments, and private hunters to seek out meteorites in the remote deserts, bypassing the nomadic middlemen and preserving the original find locations for science (and increasing potential profits for private hunters). The deserts of Libya and Oman began to open up and yield fantastic new finds of rare meteorite types, including many planetaries and Vestans. Private individuals who had the money and freedom to travel, could visit the desert as tourists and mount their own expeditions to find meteorites, often with the help of local guides or contacts. The private hunters and official expeditions, could accurately log the original find locations, helping to preserve valuable scientific data that was often lost by native finders who did not have GPS equipment or training.

Unfortunately, some private dealers were more concerned with preserving their monopoly over a new find location, so they would not accurately report the coordinates of the finds, resulting in false data being perpetuated into scientific literature and research. As a result of this unethical practice, the official governing body of meteorite nomenclature treats all NWA meteorites with a measure of suspicion when it comes to the stated find locations and circumstances. This is why the vast majority of Saharan meteorites receive a NWA catalogue number and not a proper place name. Obvious examples of this practice are the meteorites with the “Sahara” name and catalogue numbers which have dubious find data. It was because of this practice, in part, that museums and institutions began to turn their collective noses up at NWA material. These exotic new meteorites had begun to flood the market to such an extent, that certain rare types were no longer considered “rare” and the exact point of origin of these meteorites was frequently uncertain. Museums stopped trading rare material with solid provenance for Saharan material of nebulous origins (pun intended). The closing of the museum cabinets and institution collections to NWA material signaled the end of the first phase of the Saharan Rush. Even though many institutions and curators eschewed Saharan material, private collectors eagerly embraced these new meteorites and were willing to pay premium prices for the same specimens the institutions rejected. This would signal the coming peak period of NWA collecting.

The initial excitement and confusion finally wore off, and now the meteorite dealers found themselves with swollen coffers filled with all sorts of valuable meteorites that institutions were no longer clamoring over. For the average “end collector”, the floodgates opened wide. The meteorite market before the Rush was a place of paper catalogues, snail mail purchases, and long-distance telephone calls. Offers often circulated by word of mouth and opportunities for collectors were limited. Had the Saharan Gold Rush happened several years earlier than it did, it’s impact would not have been as widespread or deeply felt. The marketplace for collectibles and second-hand goods was changing independently of the meteorite world, and the rise of the internet and eBay changed the rules of the game as much as the new meteorites changed the supply situation. With the growing dominance of eBay, any person with a checking account could become a prolific trader and the kitchen-table meteorite dealer was born. A quick search of eBay yielded several sellers offering dozens of meteorites each, in a wide variety of sizes and types. The micromount became a staple of the market, and buyers were feverish over thumbnail-sized meteorite samples and rare types were often traded as specks or crumbs. Five dollars could buy a piece of Vesta and lunar meteorites appeared in the most budget-limited collections.

As time progressed, the number of eBay sellers offering meteorites exploded. Eventually, hundreds of sellers across the world were selling thousands of meteorites and it became possible for collectors to amass a previously unheard-of selection of rare falls and exotic types. Around this time, some dealers had so many unclassified meteorites waiting for attention, that they began selling them in bulk lots of one kilogram or larger. End collectors could now purchase meteorites by the pound in the same way one might purchase rice or coffee. The majority of these bulk meteorites were stony, unclassified types that were weathered and covered in caliche. There were some diamonds hiding in the rough, and some rare types and valuable planetaries managed to slip out from dealer collections and into the hands of lucky, unsuspecting buyers. This happened so often that it garnered it’s own term, “winning the Moroccan lottery”. Email lists and message boards were brimming with stories about buyers who bought bulk lots of unclassifieds and then had some of those cheap meteorites analyzed to discover rare types worth much more than what the buyer paid. Eucrites, howardites, carbonaceous types, and achondrites were popping up all over the place. Rumurutis, acapulcoites, brachinites, angrites, lodranites, and new ungrouped types came to light on a regular basis. Competition between dealers became fierce as buyers had the luxury of shopping around for “bargains” on the most rare meteorites. Prices dropped to historical lows and blue-collar Joe Q. Public could afford a drawer full of Vestans and planetaries. It was not unusual for entry-level collectors to own big 10-kilogram iron Campos and gram-sized slices of Lunars and Martians. This period was a time of plenty for buyers and dealers alike, and the flow of meteorites from the Sahara filled booths and rooms at mineral shows, to feed the ever-growing demand.

For about 4 or 5 years, this bountiful buffet of rare meteorites continued unabated, until two things changed : the Moroccans started selling more directly to end collectors, and the local finders figured out that the middlemen and dealers were making a killing on these desert rocks. The nomads who brought the meteorites out of the desert, often at great risk from dangerous areas like Algeria, wanted more fair compensation for their finds. This increased the wholesale price that the Moroccan traders in the city had to pay, and those traders increased their own prices in turn. This turn of events unfolded just a few years ago, and for veteran members of the meteorite community, this was the proverbial writing on the wall that the market was changing again and the Rush might soon become a trickle. This increase in wholesale prices also coincided with the first signs of a depleted supply from the desert. The big, obvious, and easy to find meteorites were found and sold over the years, and as time went on, fewer meteorites were coming out of the Sahara. What’s more, many of the meteorites coming out in the later stages of the Rush were of lower quality and more weathered than previous finds. Only the occasional fresh fall broke up the parade of sandblasted unclassified chondrites, infusing the market with freshly crusted stones from falls like Oum Dreyga, Bassikounou, Chergach, and more recently Tamdakht.

(photo - selection of unclassified chondrites from a Moroccan source, circa 2007, Michael Gilmer)

- Plateau and Decline

In time, the availability of the internet in Morocco became more widespread. Where it was once the domain of the wealthy, universities and the occasional cafe, now it is not uncommon to see laptop computers and internet-capable cell phones in Morocco. FedEx planes make regular trips to Morocco, picking up and dropping off goods that are purchased over the internet or destined for sale on the world wide web. Previously, one had to work over a long period of time to cultivate connections in Morocco to purchase meteorites. With the spread of the internet came social networking, and it became more common to see Moroccan dealers with Facebook profiles offering meteorites directly to the public at large. The “good old boy networks” were finally broken and any person with a little bit of cash could buy the same meteorites the big dealers buy, and from the same wholesale sources that the big boys purchase from.

By this time, buying wholesale did not have the same meaning it did previously. The range between wholesale and retail pricing began to shrink as the Moroccans started charging more money for their material to cover the increased costs of dealing with the nomads and to increase their own profits as new retailers in a market that had previously limited them to wholesale status. The first obvious signs of this change began to be recognized at the big annual meteorite shows in Tuscon, Ensisheim, and Denver. Where once there were numerous wholesalers offering big crates of unclassified meteorites for pennies per gram, the tables began to dry up and the offerings became fewer and more expensive. Savvy dealers with investment capital recognized what was happening and they started buying up large quantities of meteorites before the prices and availability could deteriorate any further. This stockpiling of meteorites bordered on hoarding in some cases, and it put a further strain on the decreasing supply of desert finds. People from all parts of the meteorite world, dealers and collectors, began to wonder aloud how much longer the Gold Rush could continue.

For the first time since the beginnings of the flood, buyers started to realize that they were in the midst of a temporary period of plenty that could end soon. For the author, the first personal signs of market decline was when my wholesale source reported that new desert meteorites at the Tucson 2008 show were priced at the highest levels yet, the quality of offerings was steadily declining, and the quantity of material was a fraction of what it was in previous years. For the first time, I began to pay more than $50 per kilogram for weathered, unclassified, Saharan meteorites. Those bulk “wholesale” lots did not contain nearly as many diamonds in the rough as previously, and finding a rare type started to become rare again. Stories of buyers “hitting the Moroccan lottery” began to decline and be replaced with complaints about caliche-covered stones devoid of crust and oxidized internally. Worse still, the recent fresh falls like Chergach, Bassikounou and Oum Dreyga had been largely hunted out and the strewnfields were picked clean of the freshest, nicest stones. Examples of these recent falls went from black crusted whole stones to broken fragments with obvious oxidation. The strains of increased demand were finally catching up with the supply, and the situation we currently see began to evolve.

- Af termath

Around the same time that the Saharan Rush was in steady decline, several spectacular falls grabbed the public eye and put the focus of the mass media squarely on meteorites. In addition to the usual news outlets (which frequently botched their meteorite coverage with factual errors and misinformation), blogs, websites, message boards, and YouTube were abuzz with excitement surrounding the falls of Buzzard Coulee, Almahata Sitta, Ash Creek, and Lorton. These falls generated great publicity with bolide videos, cell phone photos, hunting stories and front-page news. Buzzard Coulee’s spectacular fireball lit up the night sky while captured on film. Ash Creek produced the first “meteorite finding dog”. Almahata Sitta was discovered in space and it’s fall site accurately predicted. The Lorton meteorite fall punched a hole in the roof of a dentist’s office and a legal battle ensued over ownership. And recently, school kids found meteorites on the playground from the Mifflin fall.

For the first time, new meteorite falls generated excitement outside of the usual collector circles and energized the lay public about the once-esoteric subject of meteorites. Cable television viewers were treated to the very first program dedicated solely to hunting space rocks (“Meteorite Men” on the Discovery Science Channel), and “meteorite” suddenly became a household word. All of this attention increased demand even further and the shortage of supply become impossible to ignore. When wholesale stocks of desert meteorites started to run low, some of the dealers who had been hoarding large quantities of specimens opened their vaults and released huge amounts of material onto the market in an effort to feed the demand and make a handsome profit from their investments. This alleviated the supply shortage somewhat, but ultimately it would only delay the inevitable.

So where are we today in relation to the Gold Rush? Arguably, the Gold Rush is over, although we are still enjoying some of the fruits of that period. Compared to the time before the Rush, collectors still have a large selection of rare types to choose from, at prices that are considerably lower than the pre-internet days. A new collector with an eBay account can amass an impressive type collection or fall collection in a fraction of the time it would have taken in the days of snail mail and money orders.

As the first decade of the 21st century comes to a close, the selection and overall availability of specimens has gone into a slow decline. eBay is no longer the sole dominate market for meteorites and many dealers have migrated away from the deafening roar of eBay to find quieter and more profitable pastures elsewhere on the web. Many dealers now have ecommerce websites with built-in checkout functions, so meteorites can be purchased instantly on impulse, and are not subject to the fickle nature of eBay or auction bidders. Some dealers also operate on Facebook, using their personal profiles or business pages to announce new specimens and makes offers. With the landscape of the market now spread out over a wider area, buyers must do a little more searching to get the big picture of specimen availability. Collectors who rely solely on eBay (or avoid it entirely) are only getting a partial picture of the meteorite market. This proliferation of new dealers and new avenues of sale was made possible, in large part, by the Saharan Gold Rush.

Even though supplies are declining and prices are rising, a massive amount of material was dumped on to the marketplace during the peak period of the Rush. Metric tons of meteorites are now in private hands that were once laying undiscovered in the desert, or locked away in institutional collection cabinets. This mass injection of new material will have long term effects on the marketplace for generations to come. The world of meteorite collectors has been forever changed by the flood of NWA meteorites, and we are unlikely to see a repeat performance in the future. The world only has one region like Northwest Africa, where a fortuitous combination of geographical, legal, and climatological forces converged to create a robust private market in Morocco. Looking around the globe, there are no new Moroccos waiting in the wings, waiting to be unleash a new Gold Rush of meteorites. We have been lucky to be a part of the biggest proliferation of privately-available meteorites in history. As collectors, dealers, wholesalers, hunters and curious onlookers, we should be very grateful for our large collections of meteorites that are populated with rare types and exotic localities.

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Meteorite Calendar – October 2010 by Anne Black

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Peekskill Meteorite 654 grams by Michael Johnson

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PEEKSKILL Stone. Olivine-bronzite chondrite (H6) Westchester County, NY, USA Witnessed fall, October 9, 1992 Recovered weight 12.57 kg

Specimen weight pictured above is 654 grams

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Zhamanshin Crater Glass – Zhamanshinite by Editor

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Zhamanshinite 278.1 g From Zhamanshin Crater

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Once a few decades ago this opening was a framed window in the wall of H. H. Nininger's Home and Museum building. From this window he must have many times pondered the mysteries of Meteor Crater seen in the distance.