Some unclassified meteorites will sell for around 50 cents per gram. More beautiful stones such as pallasites contain crystals and can look extremely dazzling when they're polished. Those can range all the way up to $40 dollars a gram. Rarer stones can fetch up to $1000 per gram if they're in good condition.
Meteorites have significant financial value to collectors and scientific value to researchers. Meteorite values can range from a few dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Queensland Museum's new meteorite valued at $100,000 but priceless to scientists. It is believed to be one of only five in the world and has been valued at $100,000, but a meteorite recently acquired by the Queensland Museum is already proving invaluable to scientists.
A unique 4-pound pallasite meteorite featuring crystals of olivine and peridot recently sold for $60,480. That's over $15,000 per pound! Pieces of Mars rock can command similar prices, with a 4.25-pound piece selling for $63,000, approximately $15,000 per pound. Meteorites from the Moon are even more valuable.
In the US, if you find a meteorite on your land, you own it. And if you buy a meteorite from someone who found it on their land, you legally own it too. But the US government has stated that no matter who finds a meteorite on public lands, it belongs to the Smithsonian Institute.
Under law, meteorites are the property of the state in which they were found. The South Australian Museum website explains the laws of ownership for meteorites as the "property of Crown".
Meteorites found on public lands may be casually collected by recreationists and hobbyists. The limit on the amount that may be casually collected is meteorite specimens up to ten pounds that can be easily hand-carried and transported, per person per year. Collection is from the surface only.
It was suggested that the find was worth $1.8m (£1.36m), making the man an overnight millionaire - and if he wasn't, they debated whether he'd been short-changed selling it to US buyers. But neither of those things is true. The meteorite is not worth millions, and no-one has been ripped off.
You can list your meteorite on popular online marketplaces, but buyers will often want documentation (as you should to ensure that you are not scammed). It's often recommended to contact a meteor seller instead as they can do all the work of preparing it and selling it while you get cash for the find.
Of the three main types of meteorites, stony-irons are far and away the most rare.
Crystal World buys and sells meteorites wherever they fall.
Many more will be discovered in the future- perhaps by you!
The Murchison meteorite is a meteorite that fell in Australia in 1969 near Murchison, Victoria. It belongs to the carbonaceous chondrite class, a group of meteorites rich in organic compounds.
Recognising meteorites
Meteorites have a brown, black or grey outer fusion crust of magnetite and hematite, but inside they look quite different. The interiors of irons show bright silvery metal, and stones show speckled cream, brown or grey silicate grains with scattered metal specks and veins.
Try not to handle any freshly fallen meteorites with your bare hands! Oils and microbes from your skin will slowly degrade the surface of a meteorite, dulling the fusion crust, contaminating the meteorite, and promoting rust.
Meteorites are small rocks from space that impact the Earth. They are exceedingly rare: the collective weight of every meteorite known to exist is less than the world's annual output of gold.
Because meteorites are so scarce, they are priced and sold by the gram. Scarcity, availability, the size of the specimen, and the amount and quality of preparation that went into the piece can all affect price. Common iron meteorite prices are generally in the range of US$0.50 to US$5.00 per gram.
What to do if you think you have a meteorite? You may try contacting the Geological Survey of your state, a local college or university or college or a local natural history museum. In addition, there are a few commercial firms that will charge a fee for examining and identifying suspected meteorites.
4) Real Meteorite cannot be Fabricated
This was touched on earlier, but real meteorite contains Widmanstatten patterns that are impossible to replicate without looking extremely fake.
Those can range all the way up to $40 dollars a gram. Rarer stones can fetch up to $1000 per gram if they're in good condition. So, if you're looking into buying some meteorite and are curious about the high price tag, make sure to look into the quality of the stone and what that mineral typically costs on the market.
meteorite, which fell in Australia in 1969, is that it. smells strangely like Brussels sprouts. Meteorite expert. Dr Helena Bates explains why.
Christie's has been running a meteorite sale every year since 2014. Last year, all 75 lots were sold, with just three of them going for less than the high estimate, raking in a total of $4,351,750. Top image: Roky the German Shepard's doghouse.
Never rush into cleaning a meteorite. Take the time to carefully examine the stone before beginning to clean it. If you should see rust on a stone or iron, of if you see an ooze of green liquid, it is time to do some maintenance.
Scientists keep a close eye on meteors every night. They've set up networks of cameras that track them across the sky. That tells them about the origin of the meteors, and helps them track down bits of rock that fall to Earth as meteorites.
Nearly all meteorites are found in deserts. (Yes, Antarctica is a desert because the annual precipitation rate is very low.) Deserts are places that accumulate meteorites over thousands of years and then nothing much happens to the meteorite.