I have a problem with collectors who think a museum is "hording" when it
acquires a specimen for its collection. There is no intrinsic right of
the public to be able to own buy and trade in every meteorite that is
found. The public is well-served by museums like the Smithsonian, which
use interesting objects like this for research and educational purposes,
while curating them for posterity.
The flip side of this is that in the US, there is no intrinsic right of
government institutions to confiscate legally owned meteorites. This is
also good. Clearly, the Smithsonian is attempting no such thing.
As long as we're talking about ownership, I was at the site of the fall
on Jan 21. At this time, the roofers were still on site, having just
finished patching the roof. The only other visitors who had arrived by
this time were several of my colleagues from the Smithsonian, members of
the local media (TV news) and one well-known collector/dealer who had
flown in from the western US on a red-eye. The collector, in front of
me and the media, convinced the roofers both to give him the damaged
roofing shingles with the hole, and then to go back up to the roof and
retrieve for him the piece of plywood with the hole in it, from under
the new shingles. I've been wondering since then, who legally owns
these artifacts? The roofers had almost certainly been asked to fix the
damage and cart away the debris (but obviously, I didn't see their
contract). Did they, at this point, own the debris? What if there was
a fragment of the meteorite embedded in the debris? (I don't think there
was, but there could well be dust.) Who would own that?
Jeff
On 2010-01-29 2:25 AM, Richard Kowalski wrote:
I've been informed privately that it was apparently the Smithsonian that
contacted the owner of the land and offering payment.
I didn't mean to slight any hunter or dealer by my suggestion that one
contacted the land owner...
I'm a firm believer that sufficient samples need to be submitted for
classification and research but I have a huge problem with some researchers
that feel they need to horde every milligram for no reason other than to keep
it out of the collector market.
--
Richard Kowalski
http://fullmoonphotography.net
IMCA #1081
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--
Dr. Jeffrey N. Grossman phone: (703) 648-6184
US Geological Survey fax: (703) 648-6383
954 National Center
Reston, VA 20192, USA
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