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Bronze Member
San Antonio collector hits pay dirt with rare meteor
Web Posted: 10/21/2007 01:27 AM CDT
Cindy Tumiel
Express-News
As a kid picking through the stones around Salado Creek, Phil Mani never expected his passion for rocks would someday bring him here — to a metal storage unit on San Antonio's North Side, preening like a proud dad over a basketball-sized hunk of extraterrestrial iron, nickel, peridot and olivine that crash-landed 10,000 or more years ago in what is now a Kansas wheat field.
Two years ago, Mani teamed with a professional meteorite hunter named Steve Arnold to systematically comb eight square miles near Greensburg, Kan., with high-tech sounding equipment sensitive enough to find a cell phone-sized piece of metal at a depth of 10 feet.
The painstaking search unearthed 33 meteorites, including a 1,410 pound hunk of rusty-looking rock that is expected to fetch $700,000 Oct. 28 at a prestigious New York City auction house.
The Brenham meteorite, as the biggest specimen is called, is believed to be the main mass of a meteor that broke apart when its journey through space brought it into Earth's magnetic field. People had been finding meteor fragments around southwestern Kansas for years, but no one had ever done an inch-by-inch search until Mani and Arnold met and became friends and business partners.
Arnold, an Arkansas dealer in minerals and collectibles, had technical know-how. Mani, an attorney, had financial resources and a passion nurtured since his days as a geology undergraduate student at Trinity University.
After meeting Arnold at a gem show in 2000, his interest in collecting fossils and minerals grew into a fascination with rare specimens that had traveled through outer space.
"I didn't know you could buy or own a meteorite," Mani said. "This is a much easier and much simpler way to sample the solar system. These rocks come to us."
Arnold studied historical records that suggested the path the meteorite took. Mani contacted landowners in the debris path and leased pieces of their farms. After the crops were harvested in 2005, Arnold began trawling the fields on an all-terrain vehicle, dragging a 4-by-7-foot frame laced with sounding equipment.
Two hours into the search, he found a 300-pound meteorite. Within two weeks, he'd found five more.
"I couldn't stand it anymore," said Mani, who remained in San Antonio. "I flew to Oklahoma City, rented a truck and drove the rest of the way to Greensburg."
The 1,410 pound stone was discovered on Oct. 16, 2005, resting seven feet deep in the sandy loam. Not only is it the largest piece of the meteor, it also has a nose-cone shape, sheared smooth by the heat from Earth's magnetic shield as it plunged to the ground without tumbling, as most meteors do.
The meteorite has spent the past two years traveling through museums and now is one of 54 specimens being offered for sale during the first meteorite auction being held by Bonhams New York. The auction house has pegged a presale value of $630,000 to $700,000, but the current owners have no idea where the bidding will end up.
"Bonhams tries to throw some value on it, but when it's something that is so new and there's never been anything like it before, the top end is pretty open," said Arnold, who drove the specimen from a Kansas museum to New York last week in a rental truck.
Landowner Allen Binford, who will share in the sale proceeds, said he encountered one collector who told him the rock was worth more than $20 million. "I hope so," Binford said with a laugh. "Well, I'll just keep on farming until I go broke. That is what you're supposed to do, right?"
Mani has watched hundreds of people stop and ponder the meteorite during its two-year tour, and he hopes the specimen will end up back on public display somewhere.
"Knowing you made someone stop and contemplate this wonderful object is just a wonderful feeling," he said. "It doesn't belong in a private collection."
Once it is sold, Mani said, "I go back to being a collector; reading about them and enjoying them."
Many of the smaller meteorites from Kansas still are on display at museums. The rest are housed in a nondescript storage unit that Mani leases on the city's North Side. It resembles a miniature museum itself, with large, heavy hunks of rock resting on sturdy frames and tables. The walls are dressed with newspaper pages that reported on the meteorite exploration.
A few miles away, a bank vault holds Mani's most valuable pieces — thin, fragile slices of the moon and Mars, encased in protective frames that showcase the delicate charcoal-colored feldspar and greenish-gray basalt of rare lunar and Martian meteorites that have been recovered in the Sahara Desert.
"Just touching a piece of the moon — it is irresistible. Who wouldn't want to do that?" he asked.
kenb
Web Posted: 10/21/2007 01:27 AM CDT
Cindy Tumiel
Express-News
As a kid picking through the stones around Salado Creek, Phil Mani never expected his passion for rocks would someday bring him here — to a metal storage unit on San Antonio's North Side, preening like a proud dad over a basketball-sized hunk of extraterrestrial iron, nickel, peridot and olivine that crash-landed 10,000 or more years ago in what is now a Kansas wheat field.
Two years ago, Mani teamed with a professional meteorite hunter named Steve Arnold to systematically comb eight square miles near Greensburg, Kan., with high-tech sounding equipment sensitive enough to find a cell phone-sized piece of metal at a depth of 10 feet.
The painstaking search unearthed 33 meteorites, including a 1,410 pound hunk of rusty-looking rock that is expected to fetch $700,000 Oct. 28 at a prestigious New York City auction house.
The Brenham meteorite, as the biggest specimen is called, is believed to be the main mass of a meteor that broke apart when its journey through space brought it into Earth's magnetic field. People had been finding meteor fragments around southwestern Kansas for years, but no one had ever done an inch-by-inch search until Mani and Arnold met and became friends and business partners.
Arnold, an Arkansas dealer in minerals and collectibles, had technical know-how. Mani, an attorney, had financial resources and a passion nurtured since his days as a geology undergraduate student at Trinity University.
After meeting Arnold at a gem show in 2000, his interest in collecting fossils and minerals grew into a fascination with rare specimens that had traveled through outer space.
"I didn't know you could buy or own a meteorite," Mani said. "This is a much easier and much simpler way to sample the solar system. These rocks come to us."
Arnold studied historical records that suggested the path the meteorite took. Mani contacted landowners in the debris path and leased pieces of their farms. After the crops were harvested in 2005, Arnold began trawling the fields on an all-terrain vehicle, dragging a 4-by-7-foot frame laced with sounding equipment.
Two hours into the search, he found a 300-pound meteorite. Within two weeks, he'd found five more.
"I couldn't stand it anymore," said Mani, who remained in San Antonio. "I flew to Oklahoma City, rented a truck and drove the rest of the way to Greensburg."
The 1,410 pound stone was discovered on Oct. 16, 2005, resting seven feet deep in the sandy loam. Not only is it the largest piece of the meteor, it also has a nose-cone shape, sheared smooth by the heat from Earth's magnetic shield as it plunged to the ground without tumbling, as most meteors do.
The meteorite has spent the past two years traveling through museums and now is one of 54 specimens being offered for sale during the first meteorite auction being held by Bonhams New York. The auction house has pegged a presale value of $630,000 to $700,000, but the current owners have no idea where the bidding will end up.
"Bonhams tries to throw some value on it, but when it's something that is so new and there's never been anything like it before, the top end is pretty open," said Arnold, who drove the specimen from a Kansas museum to New York last week in a rental truck.
Landowner Allen Binford, who will share in the sale proceeds, said he encountered one collector who told him the rock was worth more than $20 million. "I hope so," Binford said with a laugh. "Well, I'll just keep on farming until I go broke. That is what you're supposed to do, right?"
Mani has watched hundreds of people stop and ponder the meteorite during its two-year tour, and he hopes the specimen will end up back on public display somewhere.
"Knowing you made someone stop and contemplate this wonderful object is just a wonderful feeling," he said. "It doesn't belong in a private collection."
Once it is sold, Mani said, "I go back to being a collector; reading about them and enjoying them."
Many of the smaller meteorites from Kansas still are on display at museums. The rest are housed in a nondescript storage unit that Mani leases on the city's North Side. It resembles a miniature museum itself, with large, heavy hunks of rock resting on sturdy frames and tables. The walls are dressed with newspaper pages that reported on the meteorite exploration.
A few miles away, a bank vault holds Mani's most valuable pieces — thin, fragile slices of the moon and Mars, encased in protective frames that showcase the delicate charcoal-colored feldspar and greenish-gray basalt of rare lunar and Martian meteorites that have been recovered in the Sahara Desert.
"Just touching a piece of the moon — it is irresistible. Who wouldn't want to do that?" he asked.
kenb
