GIBEON METEORITE / GIBEON METEORITES / GIBEON FOR KNIFE MAKING / GIBEON FOR JEWELRY

Welcome to our Etched Gibeon meteorite page. Gibeon meteorites are known as the "King of the Irons" because of their incomparable stability, beauty and ease of working. Iron meteorites are composed primarily of various alloys of iron and nickel, and are derived from planetary cores that were broken apart billions of years ago by catastrophic impact events. The crystalline patterns within Meteorites are known as "Widmanstatten" patterns after the Austrian Count Alois von Widmanstatten who first discovered these patterns in 1808. These patterns are formed of interwoven bands of kamacite and taenite, and can only form over literally millions of years of cooling. It has been estimated that it took about 1000 years for these molten pieces of planetary core to cool by just 1 degree celsius! The beautiful crystalline patterns characteristic of iron meteorites are more than just beautiful oddities-they tell us how long it took for the planetary core from which the meteorite is derived to cool!

Caveat Emptor: As the price of Gibeon has gone up over the past few years, there appears to be a disconcerting trend of some individuals offering the Rust-Prone 'Muonionalusta' meteorites as stable "Gibeon" meteorites. Muonionalusta meteorites looks superficially similar to Gibeon when cut and etched, however, in our experience they tend to be much more prone to rusting, much more common and much, much cheaper. Muonionalusta is what we refer to as a "Ruster" meteorite. When made into jewelry, Muonionalusta is often so unstable that it needs to be plated with some precious metal to temporarily keep it from rusting away. We were recently contacted by a Chinese jewelry manufacturer looking to buy large quantities of Muonionalusta meteorites for use in jewelry and for resale. We informed them that muonionalusta was not suitable for jewelry but that didn't phase them a bit. They said that they needed up to one ton of muonionalusta per year! They sent us a photo showing an example of their meteorite jewelry (which appeared to us to be plated). When we looked them up online, they were selling what appeared to be the exact same product as "Gibeon" meteorite jewelry! Who knows how much fake "Gibeon" has been sold to unsuspecting buyers. Unlike many, we are experienced professional meteorite dealers and we Guarantee our Gibeon meteorite's authenticity. Less experienced individuals could easily be fooled by the superficially similar appearance of muonionalusta to Gibeon, and given the large quantities of muonionalusta apparently being sold as Gibeon these days, it is more important than ever to buy from meteorite experts. Buyers beware!