Every year I visit Mineralien Tage in Munich to meet meteorite friends and, above all, see many new meteorites. There are hundreds of tables with tons of minerals, jewelry, and fossils.
Among them on these tables are hidden meteorites. This year I am again seeing much less material than in previous years. Many people were missing and the usually well-represented “NWA area” was almost completely absent. That was sad, but there was still a lot to see.
Our Munich veterans were there as always. Mike Farmer with Achim and Moritz Carl showed a large variety of high-quality meteorites at a wide range of prices. One of the cool specimens was a few kilos of Springwater for a nice sum of euros.
(Mike Farmer with Kazimierz Mazurek holding Springwater)A few meters away, Hans Koser sold his standard material. Between small and large Campo del Cielos were inconspicuous boxes with some fresh-looking chondrites. Only after a closer look could you see that it was not a chondrites, but the latest “Holy Grail” of meteorites, named Katol. A chondritic crust hid an unusual achondritic matrix with many green crystals. There were many stones in different conditions, from fresh and complete to lightly weathered fragments—amazing material.
Mohamed Hmani was this time without his father Ali, but his assortment of meteorites was wide as always. There were many chondrites and achondrites to “taste.”
Also, my Russian friends were missing this year. Sergey Afanasjev was without Dima Sadilenko and the rest of his team. He had some nice-looking Sikhote-Alins and large slices of Dhofar 007 eucrite the size of a small plate. I had never seen specimens like this before.
Looking for some hidden treasures, I found monster sized slices … hmmm … rather like plates of Seymchan. The one that I am holding weighs about 7 kg and the other on the floor weighs around 40 kg or more.
As I wrote in the beginning, the Moroccans forgot their meteorites this year and there were only a few small boxes with unclassified ordinary chondrites. Only Ismaily Sidi Mohamed had something to show, but not too much. These were a few nice-looking complere specimens with nice crust, but that was all.
On some other tables could be found Muonionalusta in all sizes and nice specimens of Henbury.
But the Munich 2012 centerpieces were somewhere else. In the center of the A5 hall were seven large cabinets with the rarest Austria-Germany meteorites. There were:
Mauerkirchen, a 19kg L6 fall from 20.11.1768
Eichstädt, a 3kg of H5 fall from 19.02.1785
Krähenberg, a 16.5kg of LL5 from 05.05.1869
Neuschwanstein, a 1.6kg, 1.7kg, and 2.6kg of the EL6 fall from 06.04.2002
There were also small fragments of Unter-Mässing, Mässing and Schönenberg. These pieces were totally amazing and worth seeing. Especially beautiful was the Krähenberg because it is nearly identical to our Polish fall Baszkowka. Between rare and expensive minerals, I found a lonely 285kg Gibeon.
And that is all. Not as many stones as years ago, but it was nice to be there. I hope to see all of you next year and many more meteorites.
