LITTLE ROCK — "The sexiest meteorite on earth" found a six-figure suitor, but the giant space rock that Arkansas meteorite hunter Steve Arnold put up for auction Sunday flamed out early.
The bidding stalled at $200,000 - less than the minimum price that Arnold had set for his one-of-a-kind meteorite. The 41-year-old professional meteorite hunter and broker, who lives near Kingston inMadison County, discovered the 1,430-pound chunk of asteroid two years ago buried in a Kansas wheat field.
Touted as "the most important American meteorite find of the past 50 years," Arnold's meteorite shared top billing in the fine-meteorite auction Bonhams & Butterfields held Sunday afternoon in New York City.
The 53 lots included specimens scavenged from remote corners of the globe - from Siberia to the highest desert onearth, the Atacama in Chile, according to the auction catalog.
Slices of the moon came from nomads in the Sahara Desert of Namibia. In China, schoolchildren found cosmic treasures after a Valentine's Day 1997 meteor shower. Among the other items that went before the final hammer fell Sunday: a mailbox crumpled by a meteorite that whistled down outside Carutha Barnard's Georgia home one winter night in 1984 ($82,750)and a 23-gram slice of the meteorite that crashed down on a car in Peekskill, N.Y. ($1,673, a price that included parts of the car).
With bidders calling in from Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Australia, Sunday's sale raked in $750,000, said Levi Morgan, spokesman for Bonhams & Butterfields. But it failed to move either Arnold's rock or the other headline attraction, a chunk cut from the popular "Willamette meteorite" display at New York's American Museum of Natural History.
Morgan said Bonhams & Butterfields will now work to arrange private sales for the two pieces.
Neither Arnold nor Phil Mani, the San Antonio lawyer who bankrolled his successful 2005 Kansas expedition, immediately returned calls for comment Sunday.
While en route to New York last week, Arnold said he was optimistic but nervous about the prospects for his meteorite. A rare type of meteorite that contains the gemstone peridot, its size and distinctive nose cone make it unique. The rock is by far the biggest find in a 13-year prospecting career that has taken Arnold as far as the deserts of Oman searching for space treasures.
"You know, it's been a blessingto us," Arnold said Wednesday as he rode a train into New York City. "But it's kind of like, if it brings a little, that's great, and if it brings a lot, that's great. Either way, it's more than we started with."
Arnold's find already has brought him fame, including an appearance on NBC's Today Show and wide mentions in the printed press. The Ozarks meteorite hunter was front-page material in Friday's Los Angeles Times.
But the No. 1 seller at Sunday's auction was an iron-gray meteorite from Siberia with a distinctive shape. Described by its former owner, the Macovich meteorite collection, as "the sexiest meteorite on earth," it fetched $122,750.
Arkansas, Pages 7, 11 on 10/29/2007