Meteorite shower hits Damien Leclere's Natural History auction, this weekend

An impressive range of spacerocks will be on offer from private collections at the French auctioneer

Meteorite collectors who track all the lists of upcoming auctions will have been excited and hopeful to see that French auction house Damien Leclere is holding a Sale of Natural Science, Fossils and Minerals.

Usually sales described in this way have the odd meteorite tucked in there somewhere - Christie's upcoming sale has two, for example.

Damien Leclere has gone a little further, however, and is offering 25 lots of meteorites, all of which are covetable pieces which would sit nicely in any collection.

Most of the pieces offered are iron meteorites, albeit from a wide range of sources, including America's Canyon Diablo meteorite, the Gibbeon meteorite of Namibia and Australia's own fall from Mundrabilla.

An alien beauty... the Campo del Cielo meteorite

Those in the market for something ever more exotic will be delighted to see a small fragment of Martian meteorite - that is, a meteorite proved to have been scored from the surface of Mars before beginning a long trip which ended down on Earth. The 8 x 9mm piece is listed at just €500-700.

Some of the others have substantially higher estimates, of which the highest belongs to a piece of our old friend the Campo del Cielo meteorite.

The present example is a large (11.4kg) and rather beautiful piece, which is expected to bring €6,000-10,000 ($14,200). Damien Leclere's auction takes place in Marseille, but with full online bidding, on March 26.