Meteorite Optimist Insists Magnetism Proves Status Despite Successful Streak Test

The streak plate had been back on the folding table for about four seconds when Del Krehmer said the test had gone exactly as he expected.

It had. The pencil-width line the corner of his rock had dragged across the unglazed tile was dark gray, nearly black. That is the streak magnetite leaves. Iron meteorites tend to leave nothing at all, or a faint pale mark.

I had recorded the invoice first, because that is the order I work in. Krehmer paid $145 in March at the Ridgeline Gem and Mineral Expo for a fist-sized mass he describes as "heavy as a hand grenade and shaped like one." The dealer's card, which he keeps folded in a sandwich bag, reads: "Iron meteorite, unclassified, old collection, original find location lost." That last clause is doing more work than the first three.

The magnet came out of his pocket before the tile did. A small black refrigerator magnet clicked against the mass and stayed there when he held the rock sideways. "There," he said. "You explain that."

Priscilla Wend, who runs the club's identification table, explained it. Magnetite is one of the most magnetic things you can pick up off the ground outside of a scrapyard. Magnetism narrows the field to about nine candidates and eliminates none of them in his favor. She said this in the voice of someone who has said it at forty tables.

The hydrostatic weigh came next. Krehmer weighed the rock dry on the club's brass balance, then hanging by sewing thread in a jar of water. Specific gravity landed at 5.1. Iron meteorites run closer to the sevens.

"Magnetism is a property, not a provenance," said Otis Vale, who issues rulings nobody asked for and who was not asked for this one either.

Krehmer did not dispute any number on the table. He disputed the order of operations. He wants the classification to rest on the magnet, because the magnet is the test he can repeat in his kitchen, at night, without an appointment. The streak plate requires a witness. Harold Loomis, by the door, said only that it was a very good rock and very heavy, which he has now said three times.

Inez Fenn will log it in the monthly update as magnetite, purchased as an unclassified iron, find location lost on paper before it was lost to anyone alive. The group believes whatever appears under her heading.

Krehmer took the rock home in his coat pocket. A fist-sized magnetite nodule that holds a magnet to itself is not a bad thing to own. He keeps it on the shelf by the window, and he says he will keep looking for the man who sold it to him. That is a fair next step, and it costs nothing to attempt.