The world of collectibles has continued to evolve over time. It’s not just about baseball cards, comic books, coins and stamps, and not even just about fine art. Collectibles also includes historical and scientific items, including items from space and fossils — and even meteorites. Are meteorites worth over $1,000 or $2,000 per ounce?

Determining a valuation for any collectible can be tricky. Some collectibles have very transparent and known valuations due to grading (provenance) and due to scarcity and interest (supply and demand). But what about collecting meteorites, and what about buying a shared interest in a meteorite exactly as if it was a share of stock?

The Meteoritical Bulletin, the official source for information on newly found meteorites, has assigned the provisional name NWA 12964 to a meteorite that may be among the first of its kind. The Rally Rd. app is selling shares in a registered offering to qualified investors at a valuation of $350,000.

This lunar meteorite was reported to be discovered by nomads in the African nation of Mali. It was determined to be of lunar origin due to the meteorite’s close similarity to other examples which returned from the prior Apollo space missions.

The NWA 12964 meteorite is said to weigh 4.63 kilograms, which translates to 10.186 pounds. That then converts to 162.976 ounces, which we will just round up to 163 ounces for simplicity.

Rally Rd. is selling 17,500 shares in NWA 12964 at $20.00 per share. That $350,000 and 163 ounces of total weight translates to the equivalent of $2,147.23 per ounce. That is not of course meant that you can buy an ounce of meteorite from this offering, but it is one way to look at valuations in a shared ownership basis.

Another way for collectors and the share investors to evaluate the value of any collectible is by looking at comparable sales. It has already been stated that lunar meteorites are among the rarest of the known substances that can be found on earth. In fact, it would be easier to go round up moon rocks in a space launch than it would be to intentionally find these.

Collectors Dashboard has tracked other lunar meteorite sales for a reference, and suddenly the cost becomes much more clearly defined.

In October of 2012, Heritage Auctions sold two lunar meteorite chunks sold for $300,000.40. This example was named DaG 1058 (and paired to DaG 400, with close proximity believed to be from the same event) and was called a lunar highland breccia from the far side of the Moon. The total there was a combined 3.92 pounds of lunar meteorite, making the current offering a relative bargain. These were noted as follows:

• End Piece A: 116 x 231 x 35mm (4.5 x 9 x 1.4 inches) and 1096.47 grams (2.42 pounds)
• End Piece B: 116 x 238 x 23mm (4.5 x 9.33 x 1 inches) and 683.19 grams (1.50 pounds)

Heritage Auctions sold the NWA 8641 lunar meteorite for $218,750 in August 2020. This chunk of the moon weighed 6.4 pounds (2.9 kilograms) and had been discovered in the Sahara Desert in Morocco in 2014.

As for the total weight of lunar meteorites that is available on the earth, Heritage Auctions has noted less than 0.5% of all meteorites found on the earth are of lunar origin — and less than 750 pounds of lunar material exists on earth in the form of meteorites. That now establishes just how scarce these are — and it explains why it is so expensive to purchase them.

And Heritage had noted back with its sale in 2014 that there were 79 distinct lunar meteorites known, 20 of which were found by scientists searching in Antarctica. Those 20 items are said to be owned by a consortium of countries and that not even one-gram of weight of the Antarctic material will ever be available to the private sector. It further noted at that time that the U.S. government will also not release a single gram of the 380 kilograms of Moon rocks recovered by Apollo astronauts.

There is also a cheaper way to buy into lunar meteorites. Several offerings are on eBay for tiny pieces of NWA 11788 for less than $20.00. While these come encapsulated with an authenticated Certificate of Provenance, the wight of 12mg or so shows how little amount of material being purchased inside that 2″X2″ encapsulation. eBay also has other meteorite and meteorite pieces with prices being represented as under $10,000 up to $60,000 each, but those are Buy It Now (and/or Best Offer) listings.

Again, the world of collectibles has evolved greatly over time. Collectors with a deep passion to own certain assets now have to routinely compete against investors for the exact same assets. The investors are looking to make money, and even with no guarantee of profits, this is obviously investor driven due to the shares being sold.

For a lunar meteorite to get to the earth it has to first off be large enough not to break up or disintegrate as it enters the earth’s atmosphere. It then has to not break apart into tiny pieces upon impact, and it also has to be on land rather than hitting a lake or ocean where it would never be found or recognized. And the catalyst for creating a lunar meteorite that makes it to earth, that requires an asteroid impact on the moon that is powerful enough to eject lunar material away from the moon with enough force to eventually get to Earth.

This may be a first offering for a large meteorite through the Rally Rd. app, but this is not the first share offering tied to science. A megalodon jaw was previously offered with a $600,000 valuation. It has also sold shares in a mosasaur skeleton with a recent $30,000 valuation and it sold shares in a triceratops skull recently valued at $274,000.