Meteorites in the Mines

Delaware & Hudson No. 5 breaker, Plymouth

Miners descending into the bowels of the earth might expect to make strange discoveries deep underground, but very few would expect to stumble across something from beyond the stars. Yet that's exactly what happened in Luzerne County in 1906, when a miner named George Kniese discovered an object that, undoubtedly, would be worth a mind-boggling sum in today's currency.
In May of 1906 George Kniese was working the No. 4 shaft in Plymouth when his eye was attracted to an object that seemed strangely out of place in the anthracite mine-- a metallic object resembling a ball of silver. Kniese showed the object to his brother-in-law, who, in turn, showed the object to a druggist named George Durbin.

At the drug store, Durbin treated the metal object with various acids in order to determine what it was made out of. Sulfuric acid had no effect on the object, but nitric acid dissolved it completely, leaving a white residue that proved to be nickel and sulfur-- telltale signs of a lunar or Martian meteorite. The following newspaper account from the May 23, 1906, edition of the Wilkes-Barre News described the discovery of the meteorite:

Unfortunately, nothing more was written about the Plymouth meteorite, which seems to suggest that it was thoroughly dissolved by Mr. Durbin. And if this is the case, it would be a multi-million dollar blunder, considering the value of objects that fall to earth from the heavens.

So how much is a meteorite worth, anyway?

That is a difficult question to answer. As is the case with most things people collect-- from comic books and baseball cards to rare fossils and, yes, even meteorites-- the value of an object is (quite frankly) whatever someone is willing to pay for it. Another factor that influences price is variety and rarity.

When it comes to variety, there are three main types of meteorites: irons, stones, and stony-irons. Most meteorites contain a significant amount of iron and nickel, and even stone meteorites also tend to have a high iron content. Lunar and Martian meteorites contain little or no iron and, because they are the rarest form of meteorite, are considered the most valuable, with some specimens fetching over $1,000 a gram. Since the Plymouth specimen was mostly nickel, it is quite possible that the object found by George Kniese was a lunar or Martian meteorite.

Another factor that determines price is provenance, which is kind of like a collectible item's "backstory". Some specimens, collected from desert sand and polar ice, may fetch as little as 20 or 30 dollars a gram, primarily because there is no interesting story behind them; they fall to earth, and are easily found because they are lying on the surface in stark contrast to their surroundings. As for meteorites that have been discovered by complete chance hundreds of feet below the earth by a coal miner-- surely these types of meteorites are exceedingly rare. In fact, the Plymouth meteorite just might be the only one of it's kind.

So, based upon current market values and the all-important backstory, it would be safe to assume that the meteorite in question was of the $1,000/gram variety. And considering that it weighed five pounds, or 2,268 grams, that would translate into a specimen worth around two and a quarter million dollars in today's money.