WHAT IS A NWA METEORITE?

Meteorites are named after where they fell or were found. So if a meteorite fell near the town of Zagami Nigeria its name is Zagami. if it fell near Ensisheim Germany its name is Ensisheim and if you buy a piece of that meteorite you buy it using that name. Usually this naming system works well but over the past decade or so people have discovered you can find meteorites relatively easy in deserts. This includes poor Sahara desert nomads used to earning $200 a year who now all of a sudden can get tens of thousands of dollars for a good meteorite find. So it seems that pretty much everybody who lives in the Sahara are on the lookout for meteorites. Worthless weathering away rocks strewn throughout the desert is now being saved for the world because crazy foreigners like me will pay good money for these stones.

But you don't know where the nomads found these meteorites - so you cant give them a place name. Just from  somewhere in the desert which stretches for thousands of miles. But buyers and sellers congregate in Morocco and that's where the meteorites changes hands. That is in North western Africa (Or NWA for short). Since there are thousands of meteorites the very first NWA meteorite was named NWA001 (Which incidentally NWA001 is a number from one of my meteorites - so I have been involved in NWA meteorites for quite a while). The next meteorite is named NWA002 ect up to how ever high the numbers will go - or until the 40,000 years of meteorite falls get hunted out.