Comments

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  August 26, 2007 @ 11:50 PM

  mineralcollector said...

  I just visited Ed's Aug. 24, 2007 and I found the individual I talked to to be quite rude and not at all friendly.  I spent 1 1/2 hours looking through the shop identifying all sorts of items that I was going to have them retrieve for me.  During my lengthy time in the shop I never once had anyone ask if they could help me.  When I finally approached one of them, I asked about some Nan Dan (Nantan) meteorites they were selling saying I would be interested in buying numerous of them but I had heard that there are literally tons of fake Nantans on the market.  Now granted, shop owners don't appreciate someone coming in and telling them something they are selling might be fake, but I was friendly about it and said I’d buy some if I but had some assurance they were real.  But as I inspected the Nantan I became more and more convinced it was not a meteorite at all--iron meteorites feel heavier in the hand than one would suspect by looking at them--but their so-called-Nantans were extremely light.  I tried to point out to the proprietor some easy tests we could conduct right there to determine if they were fake--such as a streak plate test (iron meteorites barely leave a streak and if they do it is black, whereas many fake Nantans leave a reddish streak like Hematite, which they likely are), but I was met with resistance, denial, condescension, excuses, and rudeness.  They had no interest in helping me determine the authenticity of the rocks, they would not let me conduct a streak test, they showed no willingness to hear that they were selling fakes and they almost certainly are selling them today as authentic Nantans which I would put money on THEY ARE NOT.  I left the shop without purchasing anything.  The items I had noted around the shop that I was going to buy would have been in excess of $300, plus to that I would have added some Nantans (had they been real).  Instead I bought nothing, and I will NEVER shop at Ed’s again!