"Psst, Wanna Buy Some Moon Rock?"

A piece of moon rock is available for sale at a Dutch auction site, with bids starting at USD $50 000. At the time of writing, no-one seems game to put down the money for a 5kg chunk of rock geologically and chemically identical to a $1 piece of Arizonian desert boulder.

Then again, diamond dealers are also so concerned with authenticity as to reject the creation of Cd via any process other than slow geological heating and compression. Both enterprises sound like artificially inflated markets to me (though the lot does include a rather nice gift plaque from the good folks at NASA - there's a bit of a story behind this rock, after all).