One small rock for man ... ... One strange case for lawyer kind

MIAMI -- In a cross between science fiction and a children's tale, a moon rock gets dug up from its peaceful valley, flies aboard Apollo 17 to Earth, visits Honduras and winds up in a U.S. court.

"It's one of these curious little cases," said Keith Rosenn, a University of Miami law professor recruited by the judge as a consultant on Honduran law. "But it is a real case with grown men arguing about it."

The extensively traveled bit of cosmic geology couldn't care less where it ends up, but Justice Department lawyers and a Florida man who claims it are fighting for possession.

Technically, the encased, fingertip-sized rock is listed as the defendant in the case of "United States v. Lucite ball containing lunar material." For now, it is a prisoner, waiting to learn its fate from a federal judge busy with a fight over congressional redistricting.

Anxiously watching from the sidelines are space buffs who have developed a high-end market for anything that's flown in space. Pieces of the moon are particularly prized. Think Van Gogh. This 1.142-gram chunk could be worth millions on the open market. The last man to have it was asking $5 million.

"Many space collectors consider it the ultimate collectible to have -- a piece of the moon," said Florian Noller, a German authority on space memorabilia who has legally sold moon dust. "That's something very symbolic or very cool to have."

The litigated rock arrived on Earth from the last manned moon mission in 1972, was encased in Lucite, attached to a plaque and presented as a gift by President Nixon to the Honduran government the following year. That's when a slurry of moon rocks became inanimate goodwill ambassadors around the world.

Sometime during rule by a series of Honduran dictators, the 3.9-million-year-old rock officially disappeared. It made its way to Alan Rosen, a Broward County man who did business in Honduras for years.

The U.S. government seized it from him in 1998, wants a court order to get Rosen out of the picture and intends to send it back to its former owners in Honduras.

The rock has been verified as the real thing by a NASA curator -- an important point in a collectibles field where dirt has been offered as moon dust and hoaxes have put people behind bars.

"They have moon rocks that have fallen to Earth as meteorites, and those go for upwards of $100,000 a carat or so," said Jim Poor of Novaspace Galleries in Tucson, Ariz. "Something that's documented as coming from an Apollo mission certainly would be worth more than coming from a meteor."

In essence, NASA has decided that only moon memorabilia that has its backing can be sold legally.

"In almost all cases, owning lunar material is illegal. There are a few exceptions," said Robert Pearlman, operator of the Collectspace Web site. "The legal moon material that has surfaced, and NASA has tended to agree with, are items that the transfer of ownership could be shown through paperwork starting with NASA and ending with the current owner."

Rosenn, the law professor, concluded that Rosen's moon rock is stolen property and its return trip to the United States was illegal.

Rosen, who has not been charged criminally, offers himself in court papers as the legitimate, innocent owner. He calls the claims of theft "a bold assertion."

He says he bought the rock in 1995 in Honduras after negotiating through intermediaries with a retired colonel, who had it knocking around his desk for 20 years after receiving it as a gift from a dictator.

"To me it sounded pretty fantastic," Rosen said in a deposition a year ago. "Between the fact that he tells me it is a moon rock and the fact that they are asking for $1 million for it, to me it sounds more like the Brooklyn Bridge."

Rosen said he agreed to buy it for $50,000 plus a truck but ended up paying less. He offers as evidence a bill of sale for his purchase of "a relic" to be resold to a third party within 90 days or returned.

U.S. agents set up a sting by placing an ad seeking moon rocks. They seized the rock from Rosen when he took them to his safety deposit box at a suburban Aventura bank in 1998.

Meanwhile, Honduras has requested the return of the rock, describing it as "the patrimony of the government and people of Honduras."

Rosen, who promotes the rock on a Web site, didn't want to talk about his court case in detail. He called the situation "delicate" and said he hopes to work out a settlement like one allowing the auction this summer of a 1933 Double Eagle gold coin owned by another world traveler who got into legal trouble.

Harrison Schmitt, an Apollo 17 astronaut and former New Mexico senator, doesn't think anyone imagined private ownership of moon rocks or their potential prices.

"The one thing that was assumed all along was that these would remain property of the U.S. government and its taxpayers," said Schmitt, now an aerospace engineering consultant. "When we finally get back to the moon and people are settled there and harvesting its resources, the value will almost certainly go down."

But keen collectors hope the lowly moon rock in court will force NASA to wake up to the value of its hoard and consider selling space memorabilia to expand extraterrestrial exploration.

"If it is worth $5 million, maybe the government will consider giving some of it up," said gallery owner Poor.