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Author
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Topic: Lunar rock
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picsfromspace
New Member Posts: 4
From:
Registered: Aug 2006
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posted August 29, 2006 12:28 PM
  
I'm new to this board, and have a question. I expected to see info, and talk about lunar rock. Does anyone have such a possession? I'm curious about what such rock would be worth, and how to be sure it's authentic.------------------
Thanks, Chris |
Robert Pearlman
Editor Posts: 23493
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted August 29, 2006 01:08 PM
Welcome to collectSPACE, Chris.If you search the archives, in particular of this forum and "Mercury - Gemini - Apollo", you will find several discussions relating to moon rocks. There are also may be several threads until "News & Events" about related thefts and scams. Our resources section of collectSPACE has a section dedicated to moon rocks, too. To answer your specific questions, unless you are referring to naturally-recovered lunar meteorites, a majority of the lunar material now on Earth is illegal for any individual to own. The 872 pounds of moon rocks returned by the Apollo astronauts are a national treasure (less 135 1.142 gram samples that were gifted to other nations). The Soviet Union returned 0.7 of a pound of lunar material, a tiny fraction of with was legally sold at Sotheby's auction house in 1996 for $400,000. Since then, there hasn't been any known examples of loose moon rock sold publicly. Lunar dust-stained items have been sold, for amounts ranging from $1000 to $350,000+ over the past 7 years. There are private and university-run labs that can test samples to determine lunar origin. In addition, if you have what you think is a real rock, you can also contact the NASA Lunar Curator for assistance. |
picsfromspace
New Member Posts: 4
From:
Registered: Aug 2006
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posted August 29, 2006 02:05 PM
Thanks for the reply. I had no idea that real rock was so scarce... I guess I won't be comming across any here. I was just curius how large the rocks would be.. and it sounds like they are fairly small.------------------
Thanks, Chris |
derek
Member Posts: 297
From: N.Ireland.
Registered: Jul 2002
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posted September 01, 2006 12:49 AM
You might do as I did and collect lunar meteorites,most dealers stock samples,a lot easier to get than Apollo's!------------------
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jeffbassett
Member Posts: 83
From: Toledo
Registered: Feb 2005
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posted September 08, 2006 11:49 AM
I have a beautiful Lunar meteorite rock display available for sale if you are interested. You can e-mail me at jeffbassett@accesstoledo.com for information and pictures.
There are very few samples of Lunar material around, making them extremely expensive to own. That generally controls the market prices on meteorites, volume available. The discovery of the Mars meteorites years ago created a huge interest in meteorites and the market demand grew tremendously. That drove up prices by 5 to 10 times the previous values of meteorites. Since then it has been a fairly expensive hobby to build a collection. I started around 1982 and have just the one Lunar piece to my collection.
It is pretty cool to have material unchanged over the billions of years, pristine rocks from the time our solar system developed and some even before that time. Showing the moon meteorite sample is a fun thing to do and see in person. Not many can say they have a piece of the moon at their home.  [Edited by jeffbassett (September 08, 2006).] | |
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