Leading the Smoky Mountain Relic Room, Chase Pipes collects, identifies, and sells affordable artifacts, gems, and minerals that allow the public to take home a piece of history. Regularly traveling into the field to source finds, Chase Pipes has extensive knowledge of meteorites.
Proving that compelling finds can happen anywhere, one of the most noteworthy recent discoveries involved a homeowner in Germany who was digging a cable trench in his garden in 1989 and found a 66-pound rock. Not realizing the significance of what he had found, the “boulder” was left sitting in the garden until January 2020, when it was brought to the attention of the Institute of Planetary Research at the German Aerospace Center.
Now known as “Blaubeuren,” the meteorite was originally part of a larger mass in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. When it fell out of orbit, it headed in the direction of Earth and reached our planet several hundred years ago.
The weathered H4-5 chondrite meteorite is of unusually high density, with elevated nickel and iron content. It is believed to have been formed 4.5 billion years ago, the time our solar system was created, and is typical of the “building blocks” that formed planets.
Chase Pipes 