Battered Dog Kennel And Rare Meteorites Fail To Make An Impact At Auction

Topline

A battered dog kennel and a meteorite that killed a cow sold for less than expected Wednesday as part of auction house Christie’s annual “Deep Impact” sale of rare meteorites, coveted artifacts that can command high prices among collectors but which drew largely wan bidding this time around.   

Rare meteorites are on sale at Christie's. AFP via Getty Images

Key Facts

Just four of the lot’s of 66 items, with estimates between $400 and $800,000, were listed with reserve prices, including a slice of Moon rock and the largest known specimen of desert glass formed from an asteroid impact.

Other items included “meteorites containing the oldest matter humankind can touch,”  a meteorite whose pressure wave knocked a mountain climber off his feet and meteorites from the Moon and Mars dislodged by larger impacts, Christie’s said. 

Bids on a large chunk of Martian rock—the third largest to have landed on Earth—have yet to begin (there is a $400,000 reserve) with around an hour to go before the auction closes, though Christie’s expects it to sell between $500,000 and $800,000.

One of the more unusual items on sale, a dog kennel with a seven-inch hole in the roof from a meteorite hit in 2019, was expected to sell for up to $300,000 but sold for just over $44,000 (around double the meteorite that hit it was sold for).

The kennel’s occupant, a German Shepherd called Roky, managed to escape unscathed, though a Venezuelan cow, the unwitting victim of another item in the lot—the only meteorite recorded to have killed an animal, which sold for just over $5,000—was not so lucky (what remained of the cow was butchered and eaten by the farm’s owner).

Bidders also had the chance to acquire two pieces of the Winchcombe meteorite, a rare type of meteorite recovered in the U.K. that was seen falling to Earth as a fireball, with one fragment selling for more than $12,000 and bidding ongoing at the time of writing for the other. 

Key Background

Though material is constantly falling on Earth from space—scientists estimate nearly 50 tons a day—the vast majority burns up in the atmosphere before it reaches the ground. What does manage to land is therefore scarce and a hot commodity among traders, collectors and scientists, who can use the alien rocks to gain valuable insights into space. They are so rare—and the chances of striking something so slim—that objects struck by meteorites can command high prices themselves, including a mailbox and Chevrolet Malibu car. 

Crucial Quote

James Hyslop, Christie’s head of science and natural history said the auction is a “really exciting” opportunity, noting that meteorites are incredibly rare with a combined weight of all known meteorites less than the annual output of gold. “Ever since an exhibition in Paris featured a car famously struck by a meteorite, I’ve wanted to bring an object hit by an extraterrestrial object to auction. There are not many, and I’m thrilled to be able to now offer Roky’s celebrated meteorite-impacted doghouse and its accompanying impactor.”

Further Reading

The meteorite hunters: the booming trade in space rocks (FT)

The Mad Scramble to Claim the World's Most Coveted Meteorite (Wired)