by Michael Blood of Michael Blood Meteorites

Looking back over the last 10 years... This weekend I was fortunate enough to have Edwin Thompson visit San Diego with the "Gem Faire." E.T. was the first bonified meteorite dealer I ever dealt with. He is a significant figure in the world of meteorite dealers, has quite the history of bringing heretofore unavailable meteorites to the market and owns BY FAR the worlds largest meteorite library - but that is another story....

Besides for being my first "source" of meteorites as a collector, he also was the first to sell to me on a wholesale level, enabling me to begin by career as a meteorite dealer. In addition, he has become, over the years, a very good friend.

As we shared dinner at my favorite San Diego Mexican restaurant we turned to one of our favorite topics: the current state of the meteorite market. This conversation took on a historical bent, comparing how it used to be to how it seems to be now:

By the time I started dealing, about 10 years ago, I only knew of 4 or 5 dealers and only had contact with 3 of them - and one of them was really more of a collector than a dealer. I started going to the Tucson Show and rooted out about 5 dealers. Now we were cookin'!

How times have changed. For a while, I was strictly classical mail order - Xeroxed a "catalog" from a typewriter written list and mailed it via the snails. This went on for quite a while, then the person who was to become a very good friend suggested I set up an on-line catalog.....what a concept! It really wasn't being done at all. There were no on line catalogs I was aware of - and I certainly didn't know HOW to manage a web site! But he, being the incredibly giving person he is, offered to handle the mechanics of my site..... for FREE. (when is the last time you heard of anyone GIVING away such a service?) and furthermore, put it on HIS site as an extension, again, for FREE. Who was this masked man? Paul Harris, of Meteorite Exchange, that's who.

I soon came to know his partner in crime, Jim Tobin, who co-hosts The Meteorite Exchange with Paul. He is every bit the generous, kind & gentle person Paul is, which is saying a lot, indeed. Furthermore, Jim is the inventor of the "Tobin Polariscope Adapter" for the MBC-10 and, now, inventor of a universal model for any "dissecting" microscope. He also "invents" endlessly fascinating devices having anything to do with meteorites, such as advanced refinements of microfisch readers for viewing thin sections (originally developed by Marvin Killgore, but HIGHLY refined by Jim).

But, back to the story....

So, now I had one of the few meteorite web sites in existence. MANY would quickly follow, but those first couple of years resulted in an explosion of my business. It was, in essence, simply an on line reproduction of my mailer, except I was now free to comment at length without worry of additional postage fees. However, business leapt ahead with each new twist, doubling instantly when I started taking credit cards, then doubling or tripling again when I started using digital images a few months after that. Images were VERY scarce in those days, and, suddenly, potential buyers could actually SEE exactly what it was they were considering for purchase. This was BIG TIME, back in those days. It is hard for recently begun collectors to imagine what it was like to be a collector when it was only two or three times a year you had an opportunity to make ANY kind of purchase, and, usually, that was when given a selection of only a half dozen to, if you were really lucky, perhaps 12 or 15 different kinds of meteorites. Such an opportunity was very rare, and, almost always from a list, NOT from being able to SEE what it is you were buying.

My friend, Art Jones had been buying meteorites from me for the Museum Shop he managed in Balboa Park and as part of promoting his business as a web site designer he had started a web site devoted to meteorites. He asked me to host a "Chat line" live an hour a week and that took off immediately. Within only a few months, that was replaced with the now famous "Meteorite List" - the email newsletter with some 600 or so active members spread across the globe.

Of course, thing began to change very quickly. Meteorite! (it had an exclamation point following its name in those days) came out, dealers were springing up all over, Steve Arnold "came out," having dealt exclusively to Blaine Reed for numerous years, and things were really picking up.

I clearly remember the morning I was reading the newspaper and turned on CNN only to see a number of scientists discussing fossil evidence of life on Mars as found in ALH 84001. I dashed to my computer to remove my Zagami from my catalog, but already had received an email for an order (which I honored) but immediately removed Zagami from my offers. The price skyrocketed to $2,000/g overnight and a new wave of price increases followed across the board for many months to come.

However, in the few years to come after that, a variety of factors dramatically effected the meteorite market to force prices down, and, ironically, to ultimately lead to depressed buying, as well. (Low prices are one thing, low levels of purchasing are something else, entirely).

A number of factors began to push prices down, even as "demand" continued to stay strong. Many collectors were also very computer savvy, making "price comparison shopping" the norm, creating pressure to beat or at least match other dealers' prices. On top of this, many said collectors were developing, or already had web site expertise, which lead many to start buying several pieces of anything they wanted in their collection and selling all but one for only slightly more than they had paid, thereby defraying the cost of the piece kept for their collection. This had devastating effects on the market from a dealing stand point. At a 20% mark up, you LOOSE money.....unless you are a collector who simply wants to spend a little time to whittle down your costs, and your site costs nothing, you have no real capital tied up, etc, etc.

Not too long after this took place, the nature of "wholesale" started to change dramatically. If collectors were going to buy 4 or 5 pieces to resell at a pittance of a mark up, then any real drop in price would have to move to much greater volume. Otherwise, the dealer providing the material is destroying his own "market" (though some didn't seem to get this obvious fact for years....some still don't)

Now, instead of a modest investment in many different types of meteorites, real dealers (the ones who make their living - or at least a major portion of it selling meteorites) were forced to buy large quantities of each type, reducing the range of material they could offer at any given time.

Well, this worked just fine, if you had a capital base of many hundreds of thousands of dollars - but not so well for the majority of dealers. Dealers were then often in a position to "dump" material at a low return on the dollar, in order to regain their capital for further investment - and to pay the bills.

This all worked just dandy for the collector. Add to this the new wave of material from N.W. Africa (so much has been written on that, there is no need for further elaboration) including the huge increase in numbers of rare petrologic types and the prices continued to plummet.

Still, this had many elements that allowed a dealer to continue to make sufficient money to keep on keeping on. What really was the straw that broke the camel's back was the marked drop off in buying that occurred immediately following 9-11, and continues, to a large extent, to this day. If you narrow the tube AND decrease the flow, you have a drought. That is where we are today.

Did I over simplify - of course. I assume no one was looking to read a BOOK on it at this time. There are many other factors, such as eBay and the like. In addition to 9-11, I believe there has been a cumulative effect of the internet which has transformed not just meteorite collecting, but ALL collecting.

E.T. made an interesting comparison...

It goes like this: Let's say you are into first edition books. You take your wife to the Dr. for a prenatal exam 10 years ago for your first child. Wanting to kill some time, you enter a common used book store down the block from the Dr.'s office. And there, before your eyes, you see a rare publication, first edition, signed by the author - and you pick it up for $4! You have a great new edition to your collection AND a story to be told to anyone to whom you are showing your collection.

Now, fast foreword to today: You want a SPECIFIC book, you go to any of DOZENS of out of print book sites after spending 14 seconds checking google search engine. You find there are 7 editions in various states of condition at various prices available at the first site you visit, and you buy one. Now, does that make you feel you have gained a "rare" addition to your collection? (even if it IS rare and even if the price IS phenomenally low - in fact, a low price tends to contribute to the decreased sense of value you now place on the book) No fascinating story to tell about getting it.... not quite the same as the first scenario, is it.

So, here we are, collecting the rarest material on earth. In many cases it is far more rare than the highest quality diamonds, yet it has become not only inexpensive (certainly, relative to diamonds - and in most cases, even relative to gold) but we now tend to PERCEIVE it as "common." Not because it is, but because the majority of collectors and the vast majority of dealers are on the internet and putting photos of it up day and night. It SEEMS "common" enough, doesn't it?

There is an ancient saying from China which is often considered to be a veiled curse: "May you live in interesting times."

We certainly do, don't we?