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adamjb

He tells the BBC a very different story.

>"Saya jual Rp200 juta, ternyata harganya Rp26 miliar"

>"I sold it for 200 million rupiah (~$16k USD), it turned out to be worth 26 billion rupiah (~$1.8M USD)"

>Uang itu pun sudah habis dibagi-bagi kepada keluarga, yatim piatu, gereja, dan perbaikan makam orangtua

>The money has been distributed towards families, orphans, churches and fixing parents' graves.

>"Uangnya sudah habis, cuma Rp200 juta"

>"The money is already gone, only 200 million rupiah"

>"Kalau betul (harganya) Rp26 miliar, saya merasa dibohongi. Saya kecewa."

>If it's true (that it's worth) 26 billion rupiah, I feel lied to. I am disappointed."

https://www.bbc.com/indonesia/majalah-54996882

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That's awful if true. I guess technically the headline is still correct if you're talking about a millionaire in Rupiah terms (but 1 million Rupiah is only about USD 70). So is the man who became a millionaire (in dollar terms) the collector from the USA?

I would guess someone who's spending $16K on a meteorite is probably already very well off, if not a millionaire.

Or someone who knows that it's worth a lot more.

Sure, but I'm reasonably well off, not rich per se, but I am a SWE and I am able to save a good bit of money, and I would definitely have to think twice, and then think twice again, about spending $16K in one go on my hobby.

If you knew you could flip a $16k investment into a $1MM return practically overnight I bet you could come up with $16k in an instant.

Sure, except I'd never offer someone $16K for something I knew to be worth $1M.

Unless you are talking about profit sharing, you would probably offer the lowest amount that you knew you could get away with so that your chances of flipping a profit is maximized.

There is nothing right / wrong about this. It is just human nature / market dynamics. Companies do it all the time when they hire us.

That is not human nature. That is avarice. Your intuition that "everybody does it" does not make it right.

No, in fact, I would not. If I were a dealer in such things, I would offer a fair amount that lets me make money and isn't an insult to the seller like $16K is. Given that something like this probably has to be sold at auction, I would guess $400-500K would be probably the minimum fair offer that takes into account seller's fees and the uncertainty as to how much the thing will sell for, while still protecting the former owner's interest. In any case, I would certainly offer a large multiple of $16K. And, if I couldn't swing that kind of offer, I'd be pointing the seller to someone who can.

Yes, I agree in this case it's exploitative.

Maybe sounds more like it was bought for the "Centre for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University"?

I doubt it's worth anywhere near a million pounds, but the article does say that the buyer immediately resold it to a collector, so I suspect it could have been worth considerably more than the $16 000 he got.

Based on the BBC article in the parent comment, the buyer wasn’t actually a buyer / reseller but just a middleman representing the collector. And he said that though he wasn’t privy to the price paid, it wasn’t $16K but was also not as much as $1M. He also said no meteorite is worth $1M.

A microcosm of human life on planet earth can be found solely in the market for meteorites ;)