There's been a lot of space junk in the news lately, but that's man made junk.
This space junk is pre-man made junk, in fact it's pre-man.
Tom Lynch paid $10 for an 50 lb hunk of metal at a garage sale and used it to keep his grandson's basketball hoop from blowing over.
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Recently, he saw a show about meteorites on the Travel Channel and realized that's probably what he had. It was curious, he thought, that the thing never oxidized in the weather. Following advice from the TV show, he held a magnet up to the object and it stuck.
He took his 4.6 billion-year-old find to the Milwaukee Public Museum and then to Chicago's Field Museum last month. The scientists got excited. Yes, they said, it's a meteorite. He got one offer from a collector for $10,000, but soon had a sense from Internet research that a meteorite with this unique basket shape might fetch closer to $100,000.
Before he could get too excited, a call came from Jim DuFoe, a minerals expert he had consulted. Bad news, DuFoe said. The meteorite was stolen in 1968 from the Meteor Crater Visitor Center near Flagstaff. He had himself a hot rock.
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Mr Lynch's reaction?
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"We can't sell what we don't own."
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That's commendable, even though they now know he has it, he could say it was stolen and get a fair buck for it on the black market.
He plans to drive it out to Flagstaff and return it personally.
Think they'll let him in for free?
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