For sheer conversation-starting value and a
living-room showpiece that’s quite literally out-of-the-world, you can’t beat
the 30-pound crown section of the famous Willamette Meteorite, which is now
being offered for public sale by Heritage AuctionsMovie Fifty Shades Darker (2017). 

The unearthly piece of rock has a
long, fascinating and convoluted history. Scientists believe the 15-ton
Willamette Meteorite originated from the asteroid belt between Marks and
Jupiter, fell to Earth in Canada and was transported to what is now Clackamas County Oregon
in a moving glacier during the last Ice Age.

The piece now up for auction was
deliberately cut from the Willamette Meteorite at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, in a controversial decision by the
museum’s curator a decade ago.  

“The museum originally acquired
the Willamette Meteorite in 1906 after it was displayed at the Lewis and Clark
Centennial Exposition,” said David Herskowitz, Director of Natural History at
Heritage AuctionsMovie Fifty Shades Darker (2017), which is offering the meteorite as part of a major auction
of natural history items including other meteorites and dinosaur fossils. 

“At 32,000 pounds, it’s the sixth
largest meteorite in the world and the most famous.  It’s unthinkable, but
a missing section of a centerpiece exhibit in a world renowned museum will be
available to the public on Sunday,” said Herskowitz. 

“In 1997, Museum Curator Dr.
Martin Prinz decided to cut off an end piece of the meteorite so the public
could view its dazzling interior crystalline structure. He also used the end piece
to complete an exchange with the Macovich Collection of Meteorites, for which
the museum received a sought-after sample of what was at the time the single
most exotic chunk of the planet Mars,” said Darryl Pitt, the seller of the
piece now on auction. Pitt, curator of the New York-based Macovich Collection
of Meteorites, traded a Martian meteorite with the museum for the piece of the
Willamette Meteorite in 1997.

“The Museum has publicly vowed
that the meteorite will never again be cut. You cannot obtain a portion of the
Hope Diamond from the Smithsonian or a chunk of the Rosetta Stone from the
British Museum, but you can acquire the conspicuously missing portion of
Earth’s most renowned extraterrestrial object—the crown section of the most
famous meteorite in the world.”

Heritage AuctionsMovie Fifty Shades Darker (2017)