Not just art, even meteorites are now on auction

A small collection of meteorites and rock samples from several extraterrestrial bodies is currently being auctioned online at Christie's.

The online auction "The Moon and Beyond: The Meteorites of the Stifler Collection" features these objects from a private collection, most of which is donated to Maine's Museum of Minerals and Precious Stones .

The highlights of the sale are among the many Gibeon meteorites that landed on Earth thousands of years ago when a wandering mass of iron exploded and rained in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia, said Christie's.

The price of the "gunmetal" "C" -shaped meteorite is estimated to range from $ 250,000 to $ 350,000 (crore from $ 1.7 to $ 2.4 rupees).

The auction has lunar meteorites on sale. "Most craters on the Moon are the result of asteroid impacts and some of them are powerful enough to eject moon rocks from the lunar surface into space, some of which land on Earth. "

A "massive triangular specimen of the Moon" (estimated between 100,000 and 130,000 USD or 68 to 90 lakh), as well as a "rare lunar sphere" (between 35,000 and 55,000 USD or between 24 and 37 lakh ) are also for sale. The first is a triangular shaped tip that reveals both the inside and the outside of the moon rock.

"We know that less than 600 kg of lunar meteorites, such as this one, exist.This lunar meteorite comes from a heavy meteor shower straddling the Mauritanian and Algerian borders, responsible for nearly half of the lunar meteorites that exist. on Earth today, "says Christie.

Rare meteorites from Mars are also auctioned.