John A. Lednicky, Bondoc, and Find a Falling Star

If you collect meteorites, you’ve probably seen pieces of Bondoc around.  There’s a pretty good chance you own one.  And you might even be familiar with the account of its recovery in Nininger’s Find a Falling Star, on pages 225-230.  I transcribed that passage for the page on Bondoc.

Long story short, a man named John A. Lednicky spent months trying to get the massive meteorite out of the remote, swampy area of the Philippines where it was found, multiple people almost died in the process, and he wouldn’t even accept payment for the trouble. “As partial thanks I [H. H. Nininger] sent John a meteorite suitable for a wall decoration.”

Those of you familiar with the book: did you ever wonder what that specimen might have been?  I remember thinking…probably something like a big slice of Canyon Diablo?  Whatever it was, I assumed it would have been lost to time and the sweltering humidity of the Philippines, and didn’t really give it a second thought…

In 2025, a handful of items from John Lednicky’s estate surfaced in a Texas auction.  They included a signed copy of Find a Falling Star inscribed to John, a few small meteorites…and an impressive, 1.6 kilogram, unidentified iron meteorite slab, mounted in a sturdy metal hanging frame…

The painted number barely visible on the slice (9._) corresponded to Arispe in Nininger’s catalog.  Nininger recovered some of the larger known masses of that find in the mid-20th century, and this slice was petrographically consistent with a IC iron, like Arispe.  We actually visited the Arispe strewn field back in 2003, but didn’t return with any meteorites.  Sadly, I don’t think it would be safe to return to the area, today.

Even without the story, this Arispe slab would have been a great specimen, but it’s kind of amazing to have come across a meteorite mentioned – so vaguely – in a well-known book.

Without further ado, here are some Bondoc specimens from John Lednicky’s estate, his inscribed copy of Find a Falling Star, and the specimen Nininger sent him as thanks for his efforts in recovering Bondoc.  It still exists!

Arispe, 1.6 kg slab, Nininger #9.44, cut from the 60.3 kg mass

 

Bondoc, ~400 grams in total.  I’m not sure why three of the four pieces were donated to and labelled by the University of Arizona – and then given back to Lednicky – but it looks like that’s what happened

 

Book

The inscription reads:

Sedona Az., Mar. 8 1973
To Mr. John Lednicky:
John, it gives me a very
special kind of pleasure to inscribe
this volume to you, in recognition
of your help in
FIND A FALLING STAR
H. H. Nininger

I also flipped through John’s copy of the book.  He made one annotation: he crossed out “University of Kansas” and wrote “M.I.T.” over it.  It seems that Lednicky was a graduate of MIT, not the University of Kansas:

Some images by Austin Auction Gallery, with permission.