Tucson '98
By O. Richard Norton

Celestial gold they call it. Gold Basin meteorites were everywhere, fresh from the field. As I was sitting at a table signing books (the 2nd Ed. of Rocks from Space had come out just in time for the show) a distinguished looking gentleman introduced himself to me. Dr. James Kriegh was an Emeritus Professor of Engineering at the University of Arizona and had more than a casual interest in meteorites. He was the discoverer of the Gold Basin meteorite strewnfield in northwest Arizona. Gold Basin is a well-known gold hunting site and Kriegh had discovered the first meteorites, a very weathered type L4 chondrite, while hunting for gold back in November, 1995. For two years the discovery was kept secret to allow Dr. David King of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and a field team including Kriegh to study the strewnfield and collect meteorites. It was only now that the information was being released and already Gold Basin meteorites were rapidly making the rounds. Through trades and purchases, all the dealers had samples from the oldest strewnfield in the world outside of Antarctica. Kriegh was fond of saying that "the best place to look for meteorites is in a gold field." This was in reference to another meteorite he had found near the old gold mining town of Greaterville, east of the Santa Rita Mountains just a year before. Now he insists that "the best place to find gold is in a meteorite field!"

News of the new strewnfield was just the beginning of 10 days of one of the most fabulous meteorite "shows" yet. Gibeon was still plentiful but Sikhote-Alin stole the iron show. Several years ago when Sikhote-Alin meteorites first appeared, nearly all were fragments with only an occasional small individual. In this show, magnificent individuals appeared in all sizes and every conceivable shape. In the past, Gibeons were the show pieces but now Sikhote-Alins have entered center stage. Without doubt, they are the most artistic of the celestial irons, unique in all their beauty. Michael Casper, Meteorites Inc. had the greatest number of specimens and therefore the best selection, composed of a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes. They ran from $1.00 to $3.00 per gram. These are not specimens with Russian labels. They are newly found specimens fresh from the impact site. Most of the specimens showed two distinct textures: one with deep pits and grooves with sharply defined regmaglypts, the other with much smoother surface with markedly shallower regmaglypts and rounded ridges giving the appearance of melting. Whatever methods the suppliers used to clean them, they were nicely cleaned and appeared as fresh as the day they arrived. I would like to know more about the preparation.

A new meteorite from Shandong Province, China made its debut at the show. It was called Heze but now known as Juancheng. It was observed to fall on February 15, 1997 near midnight local time. It is an H5 with much metal. Over 100 kg was recovered. Another observed fall in Western Algeria brought 200 kg to Earth on January 20, 1995. It is called Hamada du Draa and is an H5/6 chondrite similar in appearance to Heze. Both meteorites were plentiful at the show and could be purchased for a relatively modest price.

Sometimes sales are made when you least expect them. In one dealer's room a quiet unassuming woman perhaps in her fifties inquired about a magnificent 200 pound Gibeon that was holding the door open. She quietly asked the price. Nine thousand dollars and not a penny less was the rather sharp response from the obviously disinterested proprietor turning to conduct other business without waiting for a reply. To the surprise of the dealer and to everyone else's amusement, she drew out a checkbook from her purse and promptly wrote out a check. Before long two strong men were struggling to haul it out the door, following the now commanding woman's instructions. She was the director of a new rocks and minerals museum near Portland, Oregon and there it was headed. She wanted a meteorite large enough to be handled by visitors. She knew the value of touching a rock from space!

Meteorites from the Sahara Desert of Libya and Egypt were showing up everywhere. For the first time an EH3 (Sahara 97162) specimen was available _ if you had the cash _ $50.00/g. It was absolutely gorgeous with sharply defined chondrules surrounded by metal. This and many other Saharan meteorites were found and distributed by the Labenne father and sons team. In their room you could see a new howardite, a new eucrite from Patagonia at $50.00/g, the famous L'Aigle, many Saharan meteorites too numerous to list here, and a small sample of the new lunar meteorite Dar al Gani 262 _ but not yet for sale. Altogether, this remarkable team has found some 600 meteorites, primarily in the Sahara Desert. Isn't there a message here?

Allen Lang's selection as usual was a show within a show. For $15,000 you could become the proud owner of a
slab of Peekskill, or you could have a 3.95 g Kapoeta howardite for $100.00/g. One of the nicest prepared iron slabs was from the 15 ton "Agpalilik" discovered in 1963 inland of Cape York. The meteorites were carefully cut along the principle axis of the octahedral dipyramid so that the Widmanstätten figures were exactly at right angles.

Edwin Thompson usually has something extraordinary to show off and he didn't disappoint me this time. There in great prominence were several huge slices of Rio Limay, an L5 impact melt breccia from Argentina, touted by Thompson to be the largest stony meteorite slices in the world. I cannot verify this claim but they were indeed impressive. They showed two distinct fields with varying degrees of brecciation and melting. They reminded me somewhat of Cat Mountain, also an impact melt breccia. These specimens are for the serious collector where money is no deterrent or for a museum that has plenty of room to display them. The fields are so large that cutting the specimens would severely reduce their unique qualities.

I wandered into Martin Holt's room. Martin runs Moonbeam, where Gibeon becomes art objects, belt buckles, rings, necklaces, knives, spheres and cubes. Although I must confess that I am not enthusiastic about meteorite jewelry, I certainly had to admire Martin's artistic talents. His products are masterfully designed and beautifully made. He uses only Gibeon and fortunately there seems to be plenty of it around. He cuts, polishes and etches more Gibeon than anyone else. Turning meteorites into jewelry is an abhorrent practice to many serious collectors and certainly to academic researchers regardless of the meteorite type. This questionable practice must have its saving graces, I mused. Nininger thought it did, like making a living and feeding his family, but there must be more reason than survival alone. As I left his room I wondered if he ever came across unusual anomalies hidden in the interiors of these irons. This turned out to be a prescient thought.

I returned to E.T.'s place where he handed me a slab of Gibeon with a "ya got to see this" expression on his face. It was a "left-over" slab that a jewelry maker hadn't any use for and traded it to E.T. The specimen was nicely etched. It just happened to have been cut along an octahedral face and the Widmanstätten figures were at 60 degree angles. But what amazed me was the shape of the figures along one third of the specimen. There on one edge they had lost their linearity and curved around a point on the bottom edge. The closer to the point, the smaller the radius of curvature of the figures. This meteorite had obviously been mechanically distorted. The figures were erased toward the edge, suggesting severe heating. There was a large fracture just to the side of the curved section. I have seen distorted figures on numerous Henburys but never quite like this. Needless to say, this one was not for sale. My thoughts returned to Moonbeam. This stunning meteorite would not have been revealed had it not been for a meteorite jewelry maker...

Blaine Reed had much of what the others had only on a smaller, more affordable scale. I made my obligatory purchases, a marvelous brecciated L6 chondrite that lacked a label I could read (it turned out to be St. Michel), and one of the EH3 Saharan specimen mentioned earlier for more than four times the current price of gold. What was really interesting in his room was a relic. Meteorite dealers and collectors are always on the lookout for interesting relics of the meteorite trade. One year Blaine bought a mailbox that was reported to have been struck by a falling meteorite. This year he proudly showed me an old brass Brunton compass. This was no ordinary Brunton compass. This one had been the property of the great Nininger himself. What next year, Blaine?

Two true stories that send jolts down my spine capped the Tucson '98 meteorite show. One was related to me by Edwin Thompson. There in his display area were some gray rather nondescript angular fragments looking a great deal like sandy concrete. Some of the pieces had a tell-tale black fusion crust. It was an H5 veined chondrite witnessed to fall in 1997 and found after some searching in the rugged El Hammami Mountains of northeast Mauritania, Africa. Apparently the specimen landed more or less intact but was far too large to carry out on a camel or horse. (No roads in these mountains). What to do? It's obvious, stupid! Just take a sledge hammer and break it into smaller pieces, that's what! There were the pieces, some fitting together nicely, displayed on the table for 90 cents per gram. I could not get the image of this mutilation out of my mind, so incredible was the story.

The other story was told to me over dinner and a bottle of wine by the perpetrator himself, Darryl Pitt. Darryl wanted to make Zagami available to the man on the street at an affordable price, say, under $200. He had a sizable piece that he could saw into small sections but that would mean wasting as much as 25% of the specimen in the saw cuts. What to do? Simple. Use the El Hammami Mountains chondrite technique. And he did. (I wouldn't have the courage myself). With a hammer in hand he smashed the Zagami into a myriad of tiny pieces. These he placed in small vials and set the vials permanently into transparent Lucite cubes. He tells me they have sold very well indeed! Apparently there were lots of people out there who wanted a piece of Mars. After that story, I needed a second bottle of wine.