He knew his doorstop of 30 years was a meteorite — but not how much it’s worth

What’s 88.5 percent iron, 11.5 percent nickel and worth $100,000?

It’s the doorstop that’s been used to prop open a Michigan man’s barn door for the last 30 years.

Oh, and it’s also a meteorite that he says hurtled to the Earth in the 1930s, according to a news release from Central Michigan University. Mona Sirbescu, a geology professor from the school, just confirmed that the doorstop is, in fact, a meteorite.

Now the Smithsonian museum is considering buying the space rock, and it could fetch as much as $100,000, the release says.

“It’s the most valuable specimen I have ever held in my life, monetarily and scientifically,” Sirbescu said in the release. “I felt a tremendous enthusiasm. This is it — I am holding this space rock that tells us so much about the origins of the universe.”

The meteorite’s owner was identified by WOOD-TV as David Mazurek.

“I’m done using it as a doorstop,” Mazurek told the station. “Let’s get a buyer!”

The farmer who sold Mazurek the land in the town of Edmore in 1988 told him Mazurek could have it — that the meteorite was part of the property, according to the release. The farmer told Mazurek that he and his father watched the chunk of rock slam into their property one night and picked it up the next day, when it was still warm to the touch.

Sirbescu, though, told the Detroit Free Press that account has been handed down orally, without any eyewitness corroboration.

He was content to use it for propping the barn door open the last 30 years, until Michigan residents began selling much smaller meteorite bits that were sprinkled across the state when a meteor blazed through the sky in January, he told the university.

Then, “I said, wait a minute. I wonder what mine is worth,” Mazurek said in the release.

A friend directed him to the CMU geology department, and Sirbescu confirmed the find by looking at it under an X-ray fluorescence instrument.

“Stuff falls to earth all the time,” Mazurek told WOOD-TV. ”How do we know that object will not cure cancer or whatever or some kind of disease?”

He also told the station that he plans to donate 10 percent of the sale price to Central Michigan University.

This story was originally published October 5, 2018 at 8:29 AM with the headline "He knew his doorstop of 30 years was a meteorite — but not how much it’s worth."