Sotheby’s to auction largest and most valuable Martian meteorite found on Earth
Sotheby’s has unveiled the largest Martian meteorite ever recovered on Earth, a 54-pound (24.4-kg) specimen known as NWA 16788, ahead of a July 16 auction in New York.
“This is an amazing Martian meteorite that broke off of the Martian surface,” said Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s vice-chairman and global head of science and natural history, noting laboratory tests confirmed its origin after the rock was pulled from the Sahara.
The fragment was discovered on Nov. 16, 2023, by a meteorite hunter in Niger’s remote Agadez region.
REUTERS VIDEO
Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net
00:00This is an amazing Martian meteorite that broke off of the Martian surface.
00:14There was some sort of massive asteroid strike.
00:17And we know there have only been 19 asteroid strikes big enough to eject a piece like this off of the surface of the planet.
00:26It comes hurtling through space, you know, 140 million miles through space, makes it through Earth's atmosphere.
00:33And something to note, you know, most things burn up when they're coming through the Earth's atmosphere.
00:39You know, the spacecrafts, the Apollo astronauts had to have a massive heat shield on the bottom of those spacecrafts.
00:44So it's incredible that it made it through and then that it crashed in the middle of the desert instead of the middle of the ocean in a place where we could find it.
00:53And that somebody who could recognize what it was found it.
00:57So there's a whole kind of process or a layer of things that have to happen in order for this to become reality and be here in front of us.
01:08Right now we're going to be here today.
01:20So, let's go.
01:50They didn't know it was Martian, they knew it was just a meteorite at first, and this
02:10is what they do.
02:11They go out of the desert and they look for meteorites, they try to find things like this.
02:16So they actually called our consignor who has a relationship with that person and has
02:24told them, you know, if you find anything amazing, give me a call.
02:26So their first call was to our consignor who got on an airplane and flew straight out and
02:32was out in the desert in tents, you know, working on getting this out of the country it was
02:40found in.
02:41And it caused quite a stir.
02:44You know, you do have to be careful because often things like this are found in countries
02:50where people do not have a lot of means.
02:53So you don't, you know, you find a giant bag of gold, you're not going to go walk down the
02:57street in New York, you go have a bag of gold, right?
02:59So you have to be kind of quiet about it.
03:02But you know, some buzz did get out and people started getting nervous about it.
03:07So the people there knew already that it was something special just by the fact that it
03:14was a meteorite and that it was big.
03:17It wasn't until it got to the lab and pieces were tested that we realized, oh my gosh, it's
03:23Martian.
03:24And then when those results came back and we compared and saw, okay, it's not just Martian.
03:29It is the biggest piece of Mars on the planet.
03:33So luckily those details were figured out when they were no longer in the middle of the desert.
03:40The estimate is two to four million dollars and luckily with meteorites, unlike a lot
03:45of the other items I sell, we do have a lot of price indications and looking at all the
03:52different meteorites that have sold, they generally have a price per gram.
03:57So the estimate of two to four million is actually quite conservative for the price per gram for
04:03a Martian meteorite of this type.
04:33155.
04:34So in part two million is just as well.
04:35Didn't everybody know that I'm doing.
04:37We have a some huge upgrade.
04:38We have a total of two years later and we're still going to work on it.
04:39So we've got a formula here.
04:41We've got a formula, we've got a formula, we're just going to work on it.
04:42It's full of 15,000-plus.
04:43We've got a formula here.
04:44We have a weed, it's full of 26,000, we've got a lot of $5,000 from the
04:46system that we have.
04:48So we've got a people that are still going to work on it.
04:49So we can go to the other side, can check it out.
04:51Here we have a good meal, we can go.
04:53So on, we can go to the store for our next purchase, they can go.
