Meteorites

Adjacent, glamorous, and with two properties that make it a different discipline: classification matters more than anything, and the material actively corrodes.

A specialist field

Meteorites are collected, traded and studied by a community that overlaps mineral collecting without being the same.

The material is rare, the fakes are numerous, and the identification is genuinely hard: most suspected meteorites are terrestrial rock, and the resemblance is good enough that the disappointment is routine.

Classification is the value

An unclassified stone is worth a fraction of a classified one, however good it looks.

Classification is done by an institution, published, and the name is then formally recognized. That process is what turns found material into a specimen with a market.

It also normally requires surrendering a sample for the type collection, which is a real cost and the reason some finders never classify.

So the paperwork-is-the-value pattern this property keeps describing is at its most extreme here.

Rust is the enemy

Iron meteorites and the iron in stony meteorites corrode in ordinary air, and chlorides picked up during terrestrial residence accelerate it badly.

Once it starts it is progressive: a specimen sweats, spalls and eventually falls apart.

The storage requirement is dry, and drier than the rest of the collection: sealed, with conditioned desiccant, well below the room.

Which puts them in the same storage category as decaying sulfides, and for a related reason.

Buying and selling

Buy classified material from dealers with a reputation, and expect to pay for the classification.

Provenance matters more than in minerals, because authenticity is the question a buyer cannot resolve themselves.

And be careful about export rules: several countries restrict removal of meteorites, and material with a questionable export history is a problem that travels with the specimen.

References