Millionaire?

November 28th, 2020| Topic: RaMbLeS | 1

Josua Hutagalung, 33, is a coffin maker in Kolang, North Sumatra, Indonesia.

One day in August he had a scare and a very pleasant surprise. He said:

I was working on a coffin near the street in front of my house when I heard a booming sound that made my house shake. It was as if a tree had fallen on us.”

It was no tree. It was a football-sized meteorite. Smashing through the veranda at the edge of his living room.

It was too hot to pick up so my wife dug it out with a hoe and we took it inside.”

And he became an instant millionaire.

Thankfully, no one was hurt. There was, of course, serious damage to his house. But, hey, he can buy a new one now. Several new ones, in fact.

That lump of space rock is worth $1,800,000 USD at the current going rate. Of course, our man didn’t make that much. He was offered about $14,000 USD, equivalent to thirty years’ of his salary for a big chunk of this almost 5-pound rock. (He has kept behind fragments that he has shared with his family.)

Hutagalung has already sold main portion of the goods to a specialist collector, Jared Collins, who was dispatched from his home in Bali to secure the meteorite.

Said Collins:

It was in the middle of the COVID crisis and frankly it was a toss-up between buying the rock for myself or working with scientists and collectors in the US. I carried as much money as I could muster and went to find Josua, who turned out to be a canny negotiator.”

Collins shipped the space rock to America, where it was bought by an American collector Jay Piatek, a doctor and meteorite collector from Indianapolis, who has it stored in liquid nitrogen at the Centre for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University.

The thing is classified as “CM1/2 carbonaceous Chondrite,” an extremely rare variety which scientists believe contains unique amino acids and other primordial elements necessary for the sparking of life itself.

The market for meteorites is driven by those fascinated by space, and the fact that they are often some of the oldest objects ever found on Earth. Celebrities including Steven Spielberg and Nicolas Cage have bought meteorites at auctions.

Fragments of the meteorite secured by a second collector are apparently currently on sale on eBay for over $1,000 a gram.

Experts have hailed the 4.5-billion-year-old specimen as one of the most significant meteorite finds ever—it could contain elements which give clues to the origins of life.

Anyway, someone asked Mr. Hutagalung what he was going to do with his newly found wealth.

The kind-hearted father of three sons said:

I have spent all the money I got from selling the meteorite to Collins on helping my family and orphans, building a church and repairing my parents’ graves. I have also always wanted a daughter, and I hope this is a sign that I will be lucky enough now to have one.”

Wealth from the sky!

God, though, is not in the business of raining dollars and cents, gold and silver, rubies and diamonds, upon people. At least one important reason was expressed by Agur, the writer of some of the proverbs in Scripture.

Give me neither poverty nor riches;
Feed me with the food that is my portion,
That I not be full and deny You and say,
“Who is Yahweh?”
Or that I not be in want and steal,
And profane the name of my God.
Proverbs 30:8

And that God will do. Give us enough!

SOURCES:
The Jakarta Post