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Rare Mars Rock Up For Grabs
By Greg Clark
Staff Writer
posted: 06:26 pm ET
24 August 2000
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meteorite_auction_000824 The first opportunity for members of the general public to snatch up a piece of the coveted Los Angeles Martian meteorite will be this Sunday, August 27 at a Butterfields Natural History auction in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles auction house is offering two pieces of LA001, the 14th confirmed Martian meteorite, which was discovered just last year. The larger of the two specimens is about one-third of an inch (11 millimeters) long and weighs just one-sixth of an ounce (4.5 grams).Cut from a parent rock that weighed about a pound, this oblong sample is covered on four sides with a fusion crust, a thin, semi-blackened outer layer that was formed by melting as the rock streamed through Earth's atmosphere. Collectors prize this crust, which covers many meteorites. The second sample is a thin slice of the meteorite's interior that weighs just over a gram. "Both specimens, to my humble opinion, are exquisite," said Darryl Pitt, who owns the two pieces being put up for auction. The thin slice reveals the meteorite's complex internal structure beautifully, Pitt said, while the fusion crust of the larger sample makes it a real catch for collectors.Butterfields expects the larger piece to sell for between $6,000 and $8,500, a price determined by the auction house's director David Herskowitz. That price is set somewhere above what Herskowitz knows a dealer would pay for the sample, he said. He wants to be sure that in a worst-case scenario a professional meteorite dealer would buy the rock. The thin slice should sell for $1,500 to $2,000, Herskowitz said. Although the bulk of the Los Angeles meteorite has been traded and sold to museum collections and research institutions, small amounts have been purchased by private collectors. Meteorite dealer Michael Casper teamed up with Pitt in February to purchase the meteorite from its finder, Los Angeles rock collector Robert Verish.The two purchased the one-pound LA001 under an agreement that they would see to it that the vast majority of the unique Mars rock would be saved for education and science. To now, that has been the case. A companion to LA001, a half-pound meteorite informally called LA002, is on display at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. It is on loan to the museum through the end of the year, Verish said. After distributing most of the LA001 rock to museum and university collections, Casper, sold a limited amount to private collectors for prices that ranged from $750 to $1,500 per gram, he said. 
This ringed Gibeon meteorite may be "among the finest meteorites in the world," according to Butterfields. The price paid on Sunday should top those figures, simply because that is the nature of auctions, Herskowitz said. Adding to the drama is the fact that Sunday will be the first time that pieces of the Los Angeles meteorite are being offered in the public spotlight. The high-profile auction is going to be a sort of coming out party for the Los Angeles meteorite, Herskowitz said. "It announces to the public that its here, it's available," he said. "Because the only people that know about this specimen so far are really in the know -- inside the community." The auction price certainly won't define the market price for samples of LA001, Herskowitz said, but if the meteorite does sell for big bucks, say $2,000 per gram or above, it could drive up the price of subsequent samples. Pitt has his sights set even higher. "It wouldn't be a surprise for the larger piece to sell somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000- $12,000," he said. But he cautioned that it's all random speculation until the bidding is over. "It's like having a blindfold on and throwing darts," he said. While the Los Angeles meteorite is the newest meteorite offered in the sale, it is probably the homeliest. Among the more than 3 dozen other specimens on the auction block are several iron meteorites with stunning shapes and appearances that put them into a class with sculptural art and rare gems. The piece that is expected to bring the highest bid is a 72-pound (33-kilogram) iron meteorite from Namibia, in southwestern Africa, that may sell for $60,000, according to Herskowitz. It is one of the few "ringed" meteorites found on Earth, having a 6-inch natural hole in the center. Other notable pieces available at the auction are slabs of the Esquel meteorite from Argentina. Crystals of yellow and green glasslike crystals are scattered through a metal body, so that the thin slabs of Esquel resemble a smattering of rare gems embedded in polished chrome. Also open to bidding Sunday will be two space artifacts: a handle from the exterior of the Apollo 11 command module, and a fallen titanium gas tank from a Soviet satellite.
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