Otago Daily Times
Tuesday, 15-June 2004
Publicity push for meteoric price rise
By Stu Oldham
A Lawrence man who last month decided to sell a meteorite he found when digging a long-drop toilet in the 1950s says he could not have picked a better time to sell.
"Who would have thought everyone would be talking about meteorites at the same time I decided to get rid of the thing," Jim Nettleton (75) said yesterday.
"I mean to say, a meteorite crashes through someone's ceiling and then everyone wants one. That's pretty good timing."
The avid "collector of everything" has been following intently news reports of a meteorite which crashed through the roof of an Auckland home on Saturday.
Phil and Brenda Archer have been inundated with calls from around the world
about the 1.3kg rock experts say could be worth a lot of money.
Mr Nettleton plans to sell his own meteorite - a misshapen, hollow object he found when digging a long-drop toilet in East Roxburgh in the mid-1950s - at auction next month. "I just thought that it is no good lying around the house and when I'm gone no-one will know what it is and they will probably just throw it out," he said.
"So it's better off going to someone who knows what it is; to someone who appreciates the funny-looking thing I got out of the ground."
The object was confirmed as a meteorite by Otago Museum several years ago, Mr Nettleton said.
Dunedin auctioneers Plumbly's would check the identification this week. Auctioneer Kevin Hayward, who had not sold a meteorite before, expected a surge in late interest.
"The Auckland thing will no doubt help things along a bit, but I still have no idea what it'll sell for. Maybe $300, maybe $2000-$3000 - it's up to what a collector is prepared to pay for it," he said.
Central Otago man John Lunam was hoping for similar success with a meteorite he found in Central Otago's Manhureikia River in 1980.
Just like Mr Nettleton's, it had been sitting around the house gathering dust until the right moment came along.
"And that moment is probably here," he said on Sunday. "Good time to sell, when everyone is talking about them."
Photo - Not-so-concrete proof . . . Jim Nettleton shows off his "meteorite",
which has proved to be nothing more than an earthly concretion.
Thursday, 17-June 2004
Rock's secret flushed out
By Stu Oldham
Jim Nettleton's dream of a stellar payday has taken a meteoric long-drop.
Dunedin scientists yesterday confirmed the famed "Lawrence meteorite" - a heavy, hollow object found in a long-drop toilet hole in Roxburgh - came from inner, rather than outer, space.
Auctioneer Kevin Hayward, who planned to sell the rock for Mr Nettleton next month, said experts from the Otago Museum and the University of Otago's geology department yesterday determined Mr Nettleton's prize
find was a concretion - an object formed in iron-rich ground.
"So, you could say, this pennies from heaven idea has taken a bit of a dive," Mr Hayward said, adding the "meteorite" would be removed from the auction catalogue.
"It is an interesting object for how it was formed, but it's not quite what Mr Nettleton thought it was."
The object hit the headlines on Monday after Plumblys told the Otago Daily Times it would have a meteorite on offer at an upcoming auction.
The firm and Mr Nettleton were thrilled by the interest generated by the recent meteorite strike in Auckland, and hoped the stone, found about 50 years ago while a long-drop toilet hole was being dug in East Roxburgh, would fetch decent money.
But doubts were cast on the meteorite's authenticity on Tuesday, when the Otago Daily Times asked Auckland meteorite expert Joel Schiff to identify it from a photograph.
His advice was clear: the sale had to be stopped.
"I have had literally dozens of inquiries about meteorites since the event in Auckland, and this has to sit up there with the rest of them," the mathematician and editor of Meteorite magazine said.
"There is no way this is what it is claimed to be."
Mr Nettleton said an Otago Museum staffer had identified the stone as a meteorite more than a decade ago. However, Plumblys had been unable to find proof.
"He was still sure he had been told it was a meteorite, but that's academic now," Mr Hayward said. "But he still wants us to sell it as part of an interesting story."
Dr Schiff observed the interesting story might not pay as well as an actual meteorite, which can be worth up to $US1000 a gram - or about 75 times the price of gold. "Wishful thinking. Maybe that's why so many people think they have their very own meteorite."
NZHerald
Roxburgh 'Meteorite' exposed
17.06.2004 7.05 am
Dunedin-based scientists say the famed Lawrence meteorite - a heavy, hollow object found in a long-drop hole in Roxburgh - came from inner, rather than outer, space.
Auctioneer Kevin Hayward, who planned to sell Jim Nettleton's rock next month, said experts from the Otago Museum and the University of Otago's geology department yesterday determined that Mr Nettleton's prize find was formed in iron-rich ground. It's now worth far less than the owner thought.
Otago Daily Times
Thursday, 17-June 2004
How they know object not meteorite
How the Lawrence "meteorite" was shown to have started life in the ground. -
# It was not an amorphous lump. Meteorites are fused as they burn their way through the Earth's atmosphere. The Lawrence stone was formed in layers, so most likely grew as metals crystalised around an object in the ground.
# It did not have the characteristic black crust of a heavily burned object.
# It was hollow, which meteorites seldom are.
# It was not magnetic. Meteorites invariably are.
Thursday, 17-June 2004
http://www.hohmanntransfer.com/mn/0406/17.htm
The Otago Daily Times has a photo and more details today (and sidebar) about identification of what was first reported as a "meteorite" found during a dig for a New Zealand outhouse. The auctioneer was told by University of Otago geologists that the item is a concretion, "an object formed in iron-rich ground." Marco Langbroek comments that "in Dutch we call this a 'Klappersteen' ('rattling stone'), which is basically layers of ferro-oxide which formed around some object in the soil — a root or a mudball, etc. That's why it appears hollow. Sometimes, if the interior object is composed of material that shrinks (e.g., a clay ball), you can hear it rattle as you shake the nodule."
