I have come to the realization that I am not going to be able to travel to a meteorite impact site so would like to buy a small meteorite. But where can I buy one from and be sure I am getting what I pay for?
You can pretty much trust any seller that has an IMCA number and is a current member. There are several people that do sell them, but not too many in Australia compared to places like America, unfortunately. Some people you can trust are the well known meteorite men.. Geoff Notkin has a website with meteorites for sale.. http://aerolite.org/ There is also Meteoritefinder (flattoprocks) on ebay who has some very nice specimens http://stores.ebay.com.au/meteoritefinder. There are others also, but check to see if the seller has an IMCA # that will help you work out if the seller can be trusted.
Four of us on this forum (don't know if there's others) bought our Chelyabinsk Russian meteorite from Mo's Meteorites (Germany) on e-bay. He's a trusted and reputable seller. Mine arrived complete with a nice presentation case and a laminated little certificate- I'm extremely happy with the presentation. Received within 7-10 days if I remember correctly.
Meteorite Men (Airlite site) didn't have any of those Russian meteorites at the time a couple of months back.
Make sure you do your math on the dollar conversions including the postage. Mine was selling for $105 but after conversions including postage came to around $135.
I recently purchased this almost 500 gram meteorite whilst in Flagstaff Arizona. This is a Iron/Nickel meteorite from the Canyon Diablo fall (Barringer Crater). Although they usually go for around $1/gram, I paid much less than that. I also brought a number of different meteorites from different sources in the US, but this was the largest. I did see a 3kg meteorite at OPT for around $3,000. I was sorely tempted; I could have used it as a doorstop
It was interesting that OPT sells them but doesn't really advertise that they do, so don't know if they are one off's or not.
Depending on how I go with this purchase I might consider selling my dinosaur bones to buy more meteorites.
I have the top part of a femor off a dinosaur and a few others we found out west
oh boy, don't sell em! We have a place here in adelaide that sell that sort of stuff, they even have a small replica T-Rex skull for $400 or so.. would love that for my cabinet lol
That's a wee ripper Adrian.
Space rocks are so cool. I wear one around my neck all the time.
One of my FB buddies, Jason Borst, creates jewelry out of them. I think Suzy has one of his necklaces as well.
Do it the 'Island' way. On a cord, pretty common over here with Maori pendants in greenstone or carved bone around manya blokes neck. Of any race or colour. I have several that I wear dependent on the occaison. My Mum gave me a small greenstone adze which I wear most days. Only about 30mm long on a fine black cord.
