Note : I have only one small specimen of this locality remaining in stock. It consists of several tiny fragments in a capsule. It is smaller than the ones shown in this old photo. Please keep this in mind when ordering.
The "Nova" name is given by the Meteoritical Society to meteorites with unknown find locations and/or dubious information regarding the find circumstances. Sometimes this is because the exact geographic find location was not preserved, the meteorite has passed through numerous hands, or it was transported from it's original find location. A meteorite may be given an official name and rarely that name is revoked and the Nova name replaces the old invalid name.
Nova meteorites are numbered, just like meteorites from dense collection areas like NWA, Sahara, and others. But, unlike other numbered catalog names, Nova is not limited to one locality or geographic location. For collectors, these meteorites are oddballs or footnotes in the history of modern meteorite science. Some Nova meteorites have valid scientific value, but their find origins are anecdotal at best.
Nova 008 is one of those mysterious meteorites that is not seen on the collector market very often. Official information regarding the Nova 008 meteorite is scant. It was classified at UCLA by Dr. Alan Rubin as a L6 chondrite that was moderately shocked and weathered at S3-W3. From what is known, the meteorite was found somewhere prior to the year 1972. Oddly, there are only 11 other official meteorites classified as "unknown" locality, with two of those being the famous Smithsonian Iron and Nova 008. (They are unrelated otherwise).
Refer to the photo. The black centimeter cube is shown for scale and is not included. You are purchasing a small fragment selected from the larger lot shown. Your purchase will include a labeled gemjar for safe storage.
UPDATE : please note, I received more information about the provenance of this meteorite. Apparently, a man came into possession of it from his late grandfather's collection of things. There were two stone meteorites in boxes, with hand written labels with only a date and the word "meteorite" with them. There was no record of exactly where the meteorites were found or by whom. The grandfather had received the meteorites in trade for some work he performed. It is very likely these were found somewhere on rural or farmland in the USA. Because of the lack of specific find information, the meteorites received the Nova designation by the Meteoritical Society.
