A former Kingston College pupil who amassed the largest private collection of meteorites in the UK waved goodbye to 80 per cent of his finds last week - and raked in more than £100,000.
Rob Elliott sent off for his first lump of space rock after reading an advert in an astronomy magazine offering the chance to own a piece of another world, and the 48-year-old was hooked as soon as the meteorite fragment landed on his doorstep.
His hunt for meteorites has taken him thousands of miles, chasing meteor storms at the drop of a hat and encountering some shady characters in a bid to bolster his collection.
But the new grandfather has now decided to change down a gear, promising his family he will limit his searching to the British Isles rather than trading with gangsters in Chicago and tackling snakes in the Arizona desert.
He said: “Catch a falling star - that’s what I do. There’s a bit of romance there. These things are falling stars.
“They are so old. They saw the planets forming, they have seen comets and they have suffered extremes of temperature.”
Mr Elliott has retained about a fifth of his previous collection - which he values at more than £385,000 - following the auction in Edinburgh, and still plans to go on the occasional hunt with his son James.
Among the items sold was an £8,000 Christmas meteorite which fell in Leicestershire on December 24, 1965, and the Wold Cottage meteorite from 1795 which went for £3,100.
The latter required a local magistrate to take evidence from witnesses proving a rock fell from the sky - a belief which was previously deemed heresy.
Mr Elliott studied electrical engineering at Kingston College and worked on the Trident nuclear missile programme before becoming a full-time meteorite dealer in 1996.
His trading saw him swapping rocks with organisations including the Natural History Museum in London, describing it as like children swapping marbles, as well as celebrities including recently deceased pop star Michael Jackson, Queen guitarist Brian May and self-professed psychic Uri Geller.
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