Bernd, Joern, Dieter, Blaine, Alex - please you veterans help me to enlighten all those groups, that nowadays we are living in a meteoritical paradise !!! Tell them, how it was in the years before the desert rush.
I dont know about the other guys you mentioned, but Blaine has 'been in the game' long enough to tell us how it was before not only the 'nwa era' but before the 'speculative frenzy' era. When I first became interested in meteorites common chonderites might command a few $ per gram - but zagami could be had for 50$/g, millbillillie or camel donga for 2$/g - even 100% crusted specimins. Nakhla at 400$/g was considered the ultimate rarity an murchison could be found for 10-20$/g for tumbnail sized pieces. The price crash of the nwa era was directly preceeded by a price inflation period when people with more money than sense thought meteorites would be a good investment. prices were driven up by new dealers trying to see if they could raise their prices faster than their competition. And this was faily recent history too. This time predated the nwa era by only a handfull of years. IIRC it was 13 or 14 years go when I was tickled pink that the price of camel donga had 'skyrocketed' to 4$/g and I unloaded a large number of complete individuals to Blaine Reed. Not a bad investment for a kid who saved up his lunch money to buy shiney rocks from space while in high school.
I will admit that the avalibility of material was less back then. it was no where nearly as easy to pick up a 5kg ureilitie or winonaite then as it is today - but alot of the rare material was still much cheaper back then than it is today. (and let's not forget the cheap odessa and canyon diablo that was avalible by the barrel load)
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