Meteorites or what?

Thanks, I am still completely new to rocks in general, and also my first use of Google Lens. I thought about comparing these to the samples I got from National Geographic, just have not got to that yet. Maybe even use Google lense on the known samples and see what comes up.

www.wikihow.com/Tell-if-the-Rock-You-Found-Might-Be-a-Meteorite

actually really good wiki

I read an article from a meteorite authenticator several years ago who said that "If you think you just found a meteorite, you didn't."
It was one of the most informative articles I have ever read about meteorites. I can't find it but here's another article with different tests to use.

meteorite-identification.com/streak.html

meteorite-identification.com/found/found1.html


Saw a friend of mine here on the South Carolina coast using his metal detector to find meteorites. He said that someone else on the beach had detected
a pocket full of them. I told him to forget it as as only two or three have been confirmed in our state in the past two hundred years. we are in a
very unlikely part of the US where they turn up or survive. Around here there is a lot of metallic slag and crushed up limestone that was used
as gravel on dirt roads along the coast.

Meteorites are out there and being found. Some meteorites are fairly easy to ID, but there are some that do not look like most typical meteorites. And there are no set rules. For example, not all stone meteorites have chondrules. Not all meteorites will attract a magnet. Not all meteorites are heavier than the average terrestrial rock. Not all meteorites have visible metal.

Also, magnets should not be used to test whole stones. Scientists test for magnetic signatures, and applying a magnet to the stone will alter the magnetic signature. Best to cut a sample from the stone for lab testing, then you can test the remainder of the stone with a magnet.

And the best way to learn what meteorites can look like is to search images of classified meteorites online to get ideas of features to look for such as smooth surfaces, regmaglypts, fusion crust, weathered crust, chondrules, etc. Here is a site I really like. www.meteorites.com.au/home.html I printed out many of the pics and put them in a binder for an easy reference to see if i had similar stones when I first started to learn.

Here are some examples of meteorites from my collection:

Thanks.  This is just a very tiny fraction of my collection, but they did not cost me  anywhere near as much as they should have.  Long story, and I am off to bed so maybe explain it later.

So, what happened is when I stared getting in to meteorites I had done a lot of research, but even that was making ID difficult. I met a man with a store down in the San Diego who sold meteorites, fossils, etc. He was helping me learn how to ID meteorites by allowing me to handle and examine his collection and I would bring in stones that had characteristics of meteorites and he would tell me which ones were definitely not and which ones to get checked out with analysis.

I brought in one stone I ran across that I have put together a lot of evidence of being a high potential for a meteorite. Magnetic, found in an elliptical field, one orientated piece found a mile away or so with no pieces in between it and the field, contains nickel-iron inclusions, one piece with what appears to be remnants of a fusion crust, round balls of olivine and zeolite that appear like chondrules, etc. I handed him a piece and I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head. He exclaimed "This looks Martian!" I started to research Martian meteorites in depth and found out what he meant. It actually has Martian meteorite properties in most of it, and there is one area with angritic meteorite properties with unusual plagioclase crystals that are black and look like they were toasted with extreme heat.

I sent off 2 samples to a lab for testing. I sent 2 samples for a reason. I told them I know these samples look nothing alike by the naked eye, but check them under the microscope as they are the same stone. One is light gray with very small crystal structure, while the rest is a dark blackish-green with large inclusions, but they are are all the exact same material. That was about 15 years ago, and I am still waiting on an answer.

The lab apparently also thought it was a rare meteorite as they did contact me shortly after I sent them asking if they could run oxygen isotope analysis on the specimens, which I read up on and they will only do this on confirmed rare meteorites due to the time and cost involved. I told them of course, this is what I sent them for to find out if they are meteorites or not. They did not have the equipment to run the test though, and therefore sent them to the local university for testing. They had their own samples that get priority though, and so mine got set aside. In the meantime the years passed and all the people I was in contract with had moved on to other jobs and my samples got "lost". I finally started trying to contact them and get an update several years ago, right before the pandemic took off, so I got no response. Finally started to try to contact them again about a year ago. Took a while to get responses and for them to finally track the samples down since it has been around 15 years. Last I heard, they asked if I wanted them sent back or tested with their next run. I did not want to start from scratch because it does takes years to get classification, especially with rare meteorites, so I told them I wanted them to test them. They were supposed to run their samples last April, but I have not hear anything back from them yet, which can be a good sign if they were actually run as they would be doing more tests. If they were not then a simple no, they were terrestrial is what a person would get. I am getting ready to try and contact them again to see if they were tested.

Anyway, when they first told me they wanted to run the oxygen isotope analysis, I was super excited as they apparently agreed it was a rare meteorite. I was heading back down to San Diego to go scuba diving and I wanted to fill the fill the store owner, Moe, about the great news. When I got there, he was not in his store, which is very unusual. I asked where Moe was, and the worker said Moe had passed away. He had a medical condition that he did not tell anyone about including his daughter. The employee also told me that his daughter was having an estate sale at Moes's house.

I headed down to his house and met his daughter. She said the San Diego rock club had been going through everything but there was still a lot of stuff out back. I thought I had a lot of rock. Moe put my collection to shame. The estate sale was going on for a week and there was still a lot of stuff left behind despite taking out truck loads of stuff.

I went around back and people were mainly swarming the gunny sack backs of Brazilian agates. I started walking that way when I spotted a box of meteorites laying on the ground that apparently nobody knew what they were. I started going through the box looking for little pieces I could potentially afford as meteorites were a lot more valuable back then. His daughter came by and said "I know they are meteorites and worth a lot more, but how about $0.50 a pound and $1 each for the big ones?" So I bought that box for $80, which included that Tagounit meteorite, one of my favorites in my collection.

The San Diego rock club has made a complete mess of the yard just ripping stuff open and throwing the trash all over the place. So, I talked to the daughter and told her that her dad had helped me so much in learning about meteorites and I wanted to pay it back somehow, so I offered to clean up the mess the rock club had made. After I cleaned up the yard and the garage for her, she came out with another box of meteorites that she had hidden from the club because they pissed her off so much. Apparently, she had told them $100 per truck load of rock, but they had loaded up Moe's lapidary equipment and was paying her $100 a tuck load for the equipment. Even though it pissed her off, she was not in the state of mind to fight with them and so let them get away with it. So she hid the other box of meteorites and when I was done she brought the box to me and told me I could have the entire box for $60. Of course, I bought those also.

Later I went to the store and she had several boxes of iron meteorites. The one box we could not identify right off the bat, but I bought it anyway. Turned out they were all NWA 859 "Taza" plessitic iron meteorites that sell for around $3-15/g. Most were very nicely oriented and remain my absolute favorites in my collection. I did trade one small one for a $1,000 metal detector with 2 heads and earphones. All the rest are still in my collection. The second box of meteorites was around 65 pounds of Gibeon iron meteorites. An investor paid for those, so unfortunately, I had to sell those right away. Back then they were selling for around $1-2g retail. Now they are going for $5/g. I did buy one of the Gibeons that weighs a kilo and still have it in my collection.

Beyond that, most the rest of my collection is from Ebay auctions where I got some excellent bargains by knowing a few tricks of where and when to look.

And I have some specimens from trades and that I won.