Beware of suspect meteorites!
I received the following unsolicited email today from someone trying to sell me something:
Hello !Let me proudly presents the most anorthositic rich outstanding one of a kind Lunar meteorite ever seen in history, a real attractive eye-catcher dream from Highland of Moon, with beautiful and absolutly freshest dark FUSION CRUST !!! ( 48gram )Much more photos, 48gram extreme Lunar anorthosite meteorite !!!Best Wishes /// Göran Lindfors
There were about 20 images attached to this email, and they all looked suspect to me. Some of them vaguely resembled a lunar meteorite, but none of them looked genuine. My personal opinion is that they look like a mixture of rock, coated with some sort of substance and then blowtorched. Within a matter of seconds, I knew that I wouldn’t be purchasing anything from this seller.
It’s also worth pointing out that in my years of meteorite collecting, I had never heard of this seller or this 48g lunar meteorite. Meteorite collectors are smart, and most of us know to look for lab classification and subsequent publication in the Meteoritical Bulletin – especially for something as important as a lunar meteorite. So, certainly someone wouldn’t ignore all that and try to sell a fake, right? Intrigued, I decided to do a google search of their name. This is what comes up. I found the 4th search result (here) to be particularly illuminating.
So, are they fake? Well, I’m not in any position to definitively say that. However, I can say with certainty that I will not be doing business with this person. I would also like to recommend that everyone be very careful about offers like this. Always do your research!
I received the same email. Search the SkyRock and MetList archives for this seller – he is notorious and he will not listen to any reason about his specimens. He insists they are genuine, but they are obviously not. He is persona-non-grata on the both SkyRock and the MetList. Avoid!