How Much Are Meteorites Worth?

Nininger Iron Meteorites: Three small iron meteorites which carry hand painted H.H. Nininger American Meteorite Laboratory collection numbers. We know from old AML publications that "D91" was Nininger's prefix for the Odessa, Texas iron meteorite. So, the middle piece is the 115th Odessa specimen cataloged by Dr. Nininger. Meteorites with vintage hand painted numbers are very desirable, and these specimens are much more valuable to collectors than a comparable Odessa which does not have an historic provenance. Photograph by Leigh Anne DelRay, copyright Aerolite Meteorites. Click to enlarge.

Meteorite Collecting - The Early Days

When I was a little boy growing up in England in the late 1960s, my greatest treat was traveling up to London’s marvelous Geological Museum (now part of the Natural History Museum, London) to visit their mineral and meteorite collections. At that time nearly all known meteorites were housed in universities and museums and private ownership was not commonplace.

Our long-time friend Geoffrey Notkin was kind enough to prepare this video, explaining how the Meteorwritings article series came about and the relationship between Geology.com and Aerolite Meteorites. We greatly appreciate the work that Geoff and his staff put into writing the articles, taking the photos, and creating the banner that you see at the top of this page. It is an honor to have the writings of one of the world's most prominent meteorite experts on Geology.com.

The pioneering American meteorite scientist Harvey H. Nininger opened his Meteorite Museum next to Route 66 in Arizona in 1946 and was one of the first people to start offering meteorite specimens for sale to the public. A few of the natural history supply companies such as Ward's Natural Science were also a source for meteorite specimens but, for the most part, space rocks were the domain of academia and a few eccentric collectors.

During the 1970s and early '80s bold enthusiasts such as Robert Haag, Allan Langheinrich, Marvin Kilgore, Blaine Reed and Edwin Thompson began turning their passion for space rocks into legitimate businesses and the modern world of meteorite collecting was born.

In the pre-Internet days, with no popular print publication aimed at the budding space rock collector, it was difficult to meet fellow enthusiasts. The magazines Astronomy and Sky & Telescope would occasionally publish articles on meteorites; sometimes a small ad for "Meteorites" could be found among the back pages of those publications and the early dealers mailed out newsletters and handmade catalogs to their small customer bases.

Today, space rocks are readily available from many different outlets and the quarterly Meteorite magazine caters to the space rock enthusiast, as does the monthly online publication Meteorite Times and the Meteorite Mailing List (online listserve). There are a number of people, like myself, who work with meteorites full time, and a multitude of collector/dealers who operate part time meteorite-related businesses in order to help underwrite the cost of expanding their own personal collections.