Re: No ordinary rock
Reply #1 –
For items of that size it's like finding a needle in a haystack.
Often it's reported fragments that size are pound for pound rarer and more valuable than gold, but under local rules it's not his to sell or export, so the finder is not really compensated like he could be if he were allowed to put it to a global auction. Locally he gets nothing much more for it than notoriety, on the international market where it is legal certain types have been sold at auction for thousands of dollars up to US$1000/gram, several well beyond the million AUD$ range!
In the USA, the meteorites are owned by the Federal Government but they split the proceeds with whoever finds them.
There are a lot of rip off sites selling people fragments of rock that they claim are meteorites but are just rare volcanic rocks.
PS; Most homes have dozens or hundreds of micro-meteorites in the gutters and on the roofs, the owners just don't know it! Pretty much anything bigger than a pinhead that is magnetic is a candidate, and some of the non-magnetic stuff as well, but you need to be far more expert to identify the non-iron versions! A good way to filter out the terrestrial from the solar system debris is look for it on higher buildings. There are very few large magnetic terrestrial dust particles that can end up on top of skyscrapers. About 200 tonnes of meteorites falls on earth each day in the form of dust particles.
Topic: No ordinary rock (Read 3220 times)
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