Dog House Hit by Meteorite Is Finally Sold for $44K at Christie's Auction

Christie's eventually sold a doghouse hit by a meteorite fragment in April 2019 and a 15 g Winchcombe fragment during an online auction of unique meteorites on Wednesday.

The Winchcombe meteorite, which became Britain's most valuable rock after witnesses found a dazzling fireball burning from across the sky over the Cotswold town last year, sold for $30,200, with a smaller 1.7g chunk for $12,600.

According to Christie's catalog "Deep Impact: Martian, Lunar, and Other Rare Meteorites," experts only found 602g of Winchcombe for the 66-lot sale, with 90% of the material currently kept in the UK's national collection, administered by London's Natural History Museum.

A dog home damaged by a meteorite that smashed through the tin roof in April 2019 near Aguas Zarcas, Costa Rica, was among the most unusual objects sold.

While the dog house had a seven-inch hole that "marked where the meteorite entered the roof" that Christie's expected to sell for up to $300,000, they only sold it for $44,100.

Christie's Sold A Chunky Piece of Meteorite

A bean-sized chunk of the meteorite that crashed into the English town of Winchcombe last year has sold for more than 120 times its weight in gold at auction.

Christie's sold the 1.7g sliver of blackened granite for $12,600, much exceeding its pre-sale estimate.

The company also sold the second piece for over $30,200. However, it was worthless gram for gram.

Winchcombe is the most significant space rock ever discovered in the United Kingdom.

It includes pristine chemistry from the Solar System's formation.

BBC News, citing the scientists, said that Winchcombe is a CM2 carbonaceous chondrite, and it will reveal how the planets, including Earth, formed around 4.5 billion years ago.

The vast bulk of what experts collected in the Winchcombe area - over 90% of it - is now a public resource, open to academics worldwide to analyze.

The NHM has a 100g portion of the meteorite on display in a glass exhibit for visitors to see.

Dog House Hit By Meteorite Sold For $44k

Meanwhile, viewers at an auction in Costa Rica in 2019 were disappointed by a dog kennel damaged by a meteorite. It had a high estimate of $300,000, but it only sold for $44,000, falling short of expectations.

According to Science Times, a meteorite struck a dog returning home from Costa Rica on April 23, 2019.

The said meteorite took a less likely path during that time. A shard of a fireball penetrated the roof of a nearby house and a doghouse when it fell.

The doghouse's occupant, a German Shepard named Roky, was unharmed by the meteorite.

When the boulder fell in Roky's house, he was taken aback, signaling that it was on its way to a spectacular end.

Unfortunately, the meteorite was not part of the lot. Still, it was auctioned off and sold for only a third of its high estimate of $21,000.

Other Meteorites Listed in Christie's Auction

In 2007, a meteorite-struck mailbox from Claxton, Georgia, sold at auction for $83,000.

A Chevy Malibu that was hit in 2007 subsequently sold for $230,000 in 2010, the highest price ever paid for a car of this type.

CNN said the top lot in the auction, the third largest chunk of Mars on Earth (formally known as NWA 12690), had a high estimate of $800,000 but did not sell.

A lunar rock marketed as a "complete slice of the Moon," which was the largest lunar meteorite ever discovered when it was found in the Sahara Desert in 2007, and a slice of the Fukang meteorite, a 4.5 billion-year-old space rock discovered in China in 2000, were also among the items for sale.

The Fukang meteorite was characterized by Christie's as "a chunk of the most exquisite extraterrestrial substance known."

The unusual meteorite is composed of olivine crystals in stony-iron pallasite.

Since 2014, Christie's has held a meteorite auction every year. Last year, all 75 lots were sold for a total of $4,351,750, with only three of them selling for less than the top estimate.

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