Meteorites join spaced-out sale

AUCTION house staff member Sophie Whitelaw looks at a piece of the Chelyabinsk meteorite which landed in Russia this year and which is to be auctioned on Tuesday as part of the UK’s largest private collection of space memorabilia.

By The Newsroom

Published 17th Aug 2013, 01:01 BST

The auction also features the Hambleton meteorite, an extremely rare pallasite – a stony-iron meteorite – which is the only one of its kind to be found in the UK.

A 2,900g slice of the Hambleton rock has been valued between £7,000 and £10,000 ahead of its sale as lot 60 at Lyon and Turnbull in Edinburgh. It was discovered by Scottish-based meteorite hunter Rob Elliott and his wife Irene in North Yorkshire in 2005.

Mr Elliott has put up 85 items for sale. Other items include one of the only pieces of the Russian meteorite Chelyabinsk to have made it to the West after Mr Elliott arranged for pieces of it to be smuggled out of the country. It was part of a small asteroid that entered the earth’s atmosphere at an estimated speed of 41,000 miles per hour on February 15.

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