I
first became enamored with meteorites as a little boy, when my mother
took me on a visit to London's Geological Museum. Over time, my passion
became a hobby, and ultimately my chosen avocation. Since
1994 I have devoted myself to collecting, studying, writing about, and
hunting for, these astonishing visitors from outer space. I have visited
most of the world's important meteorite sites, and have chronicled my
adventures in numerous magazines including Astronomy, Sky & Telescope,
Meteorite, Seed, Rock & Gem; in my book Meteorite
Hunting: How To Find Treasure From Space, and on my television
series Meteorite Men.
My company, Aerolite
Meteorites LLC, has provided meteorite specimens to many of the
world's top institutions including the Vienna Museum of Natural History;
The Natural History Museum in London; The American Museum of Natural
History in New York City; The Center for Meteorite Studies at ASU, Tempe;
The Oscar E. Monnig Meteorite Collection at TCU, Fort Worth; The Black
Hills Institute in Hill City, South Dakota; and to a multitude of private
collectors worldwide. Famed rock musician Sting owns a splendid iron
meteorite acquired from Aerolite, as does celebrated astronomer Neil
Degrasse Tyson. Although I make my living as a commercial meteorite
vendor, I have been, and always will be, a passionate collector first.
Over
many years, and hundreds of thousands of miles of travel, I have found,
bought, and traded some of the most fascinating and alluring meteorites
known to science, and a number of those pieces were kept in my personal
collection. The purpose of this website is to offer what I consider
to be some of the very finest meteorites available anywhere in the world
today. The majority of the specimens presented here, on Meteorites.co,
have been personally selected by me from that collection. I have chosen
fifty outstanding specimens from the Notkin
Collection of Meteorites, and they are presented on the pages of
this website, for your enjoyment. Every Notkin Collection piece carries
a hand painted catalog number, which I carefully inscribed with a very
fine paintbrush. These numbers cause no damage to the specimens, and
were applied using acrylic paint. To provide an enduring provenance
each specimen is also accompanied by a unique handmade Notkin Collection
identification card which includes printed details of type, weight,
classification, etc., and a handwritten number that matches the number
painted on that specific piece.
Selecting, photographing, and describing
each piece has been a monumental project that has taken several months.
Most images include a 1-cm scale cube for reference, and all are very
accurate photographic representations. Some specimens, such as the large
Brenham slice, the Camel Donga individual, the large oriented Gao-Guenie,
and the Gibeon end cut are truly world-class meteorites that would grace
any major collection. Others are more modest in size and value, but
every one of these specimens has an aspect to it that is, in some way,
unsurpassed.
Several of these meteorites have been
featured on major websites and in significant print publications, while
others were found on, or featured on, Meteorite Men. It is
my hope that these outstanding specimens will find the best of homes,
and enthrall their new owners, as they have enthralled me.
— Geoff Notkin