You don't watch the TV show "Meteor hunters"?

The size of the crystal structure generally gives it away, although they still use some expert advisors on some samples.

 

Hmm, before I go out and lavish my entire life savings on a few chunks of "meteorite", I wonder how I can ascertain that the rocks I acquire for my collection are indeed from Pluto, as opposed to being mere gravel gathered from a Russian roadside by an opportunistic entrepreneur.

Most meteors contain large amounts of metal and stone. So if you find rock that lights up a metal detector its a meteor. As to what meteor that can only be done by where its found, say a big debris field from a certain meteor and astroid. Or a chemical analysis can tell you what meteors match each other vs ones that are slightly different. But rule of thumb is you look for rocks that light up a metal detector. Lakes and dry lakes are good places to look. Here in FL Lake Ockachobee is a crater. Only problem in FL is since meteors are so dense and heavy they sink fast here. Where up north where you have hard ground they get pushed up.

 

Can you buy bits of it on ebay yet?

Maybe:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Asteroid-...737?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43b8f72a11

 

CORRECTION! The meteors are selling for 40x the price of gold.

 

Nah! On Meteor Hunters they sell most stuff they find for about $10 to $15 a gram, gold goes for about $54 a gram at the moment.

Which meteors are selling for 40x the gold price? That would be over $2100 per gram!

 

The russian ones are. Each meteor is valued differently and is more valuable when you can ID the meteor it came from. Or the area it came from. Right now prices are crazy high for the russian ones because it exploded into millions of pieces. Also a gram sized piece may sell for $20 but a 20 gram piece will sell for $5,000 just because the larger the chunk the rarer.

 

I prefer the cut/polished "slices" of meteorites. The diffraction/holographic look of the different crystals is awesome. It's very 3 dimensional looking, far more than a CD or DVD data side.

You only see the effect by tilting it a bit back and forth in your hand.

Sadly, it's about impossible to get a photo that shows this phenomenon. Photo below is the closest I could get.

 

I think they're actually minerals and metals in different alloys. Youtubes full of slices from all different meteors. But notice they all are listed by the actual meteor name, or from location of debris field.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb_0Ml2mFlA

 

The next time you are in Chicago, take a cab to the Natural History Museum and take a look at the multitude of meteorites that they have on display...it is truly an amazing collection...and its free too!

Cheers, DPW [Everything has limitations...and I hate limitations.]