As many of you know I have sold artifacts for longer than I have sold meteorites. One of the ploys that some slimy artifact dealers do is to tell anybody who brings them something for them to authtenticate is to tell them that it is a fake. That way they think that the potential nieve customer will feel that he is a very knowledgable dealer and in the future only buy stuff from him. I once had a dealer do that to me with an egyptian artifact with prominance from a famous collection that was shown to several experts including one of the worlds leading experts of artifats with the British Museum. Meteorite dealers might try this also. I had a customer who bought a common chondrite from morocco from me once who contacted another dealer who said that he would classify it for him (Since my understanding is that Marvin Kilgore is the only dealer who can classify meteorites you know that they story is fishy already because it wasnt kilgore who did this) and then told him that it was not a meteorite. What does this have to do with the Pelissons? Absolutely nothing. However it is an example of slimy tactics that certain dealers use when they try to undermine some aspect of a business that they dont like (Such as competation for instance). Here is a letter written by the Pelissons to some collector asking if they could authtenticate a desert meteorite. I make no comments here (Dont want Art mad at me) but the slime speaks for itself. The Pellisons are of course technically right in what they say here. Its just that one would think from reading the Pelisson letter that desert meteorites are nothing short of a scam that wouldent be touched by serious dealers or researshers. The Pellisons are distorting facts to put down a part of the sahara meteorite business that they dont like. It should be noted that this letter was not written to a customer of mine and was given to me by another dealer. This is a sad reflection of an hobby when certain people in it like the Pellisons continues to act like this and to continue stating that their way of doing things is the only correct way that the world should work. The meteorite hobby will never become mainstream until this stupid infighting in the interest of short term profits ends. While the letter is technically correct it is very misleading about the status of desert meteorites. There is no effort to tell this new collector of meteorites that desert finds have a special status in the meteorite world. Thats why the meteoritical society recogonizes meteorites using a NWA or Sahara name. Below is the letter that the pellisons wrote to a potential new collector looking to maximize the amount of meteoritic material that he wants to buy with limited funds. Just look at the time spent into creating this letter and the ffort to totally confuse a new collector. With sad reflections DEAN ___________________________________________________________________ Sahara 99937 is the stone number 937 found in the year 1999, it's a temporary identification number which was used by the Labenne family. It will never be recognized as a new meteorite, excepted if you find a laboratory to classify your sample. But laboratories need a type specimen archived for future studies and a thin section for microprobe measures (200 points). Each year in July, the Meteoritical Society publishes a supplement to METEORITICS AND PLANETARY SCIENCE in which are recorded all the new meteorites of the previous year. This document is really the bible for any serious meteoricist. The info given there present the most reliable source for the entire community. Here is the list of the official meteorites named "Sahara xxxxx" in the last publication of the Meteoritical Bulletin. Only 17 have been recorded last year and all are meteorites with unknown location. See page 23: http://www.uark.edu/campus-resources/metsoc/metbull/mb85.pdf TKW, is the Total Known Weight of the piece, the sample 99937 was probably a 200 grams piece before cut. It is a commercial rock which will never be officially recognized as a meteorite, many Sahara xxxxx are paired specimen which come from the same old fall, but the information is unavailable and can't be verified. Everybody can use a NWA or Sahara name today to sell a rock which is not a meteorite because there is no scientific work done and type specimen preserved on the majority of these stones. Best Regards, Richard & Roland Pelisson http://www.SaharaMet.com/ http://www.saharamet.com/desert/meteorite/prospect.html PS: copy of a mail from Dr. Jeffrey N. Grossman, Editor, Meteoritical Bulletin US Geological Survey People buying/trading meteorites should also keep in mind that if a meteorite name (including its number, if any) does NOT appear in the Met. Bulletin (published or on-line), then there is no guarantee that it has ever been looked at by a meteorite expert or that the NomCom has ever scrutinized the name, location data, classification, etc. (or worse, it HAS scrutinized the information and rejected/changed it!).
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