What: A suburban Chicago woman who paid $995 for an item she spotted in a 2015 online government auction watched last month as it sold for $1.8 million at Sotheby’s New York.
The palm-size zippered bag made of rubber coated polyester was listed in the earlier federal auction as “lunar sample return,” and it held moon dust collected by Armstrong during the 1969 U.S. lunar landing. After gathering the material, the astronaut tucked the bag into his spacesuit pocket.
No one bid on the lot during three auctions, but the watcher figured it must have been used in a space flight, so she bid online and the lot was hers.
MORE: After the sale, the collector sent the bag and contents to NASA for verification. It was real, but government officials confiscated it as space property. Then things got weird.
SMART COLLECTORS KNOW: Pre-auction, the bag and its contents had been in a collection of stolen space items housed in Kansas. The thief was convicted, but identical bags confiscated at the time — one with moon dust, the other empty — got mixed up. The wrong one went into the federal auction. The Illinois collector then filed a federal suit to get the bag back. NASA refused but the collector persisted, and a district judge ordered it returned to her.
HOT TIP: Largely because of this incident, a movement by concerned citizens is underway, seeking protection for Apollo sites.
BOTTOM LINE: Many Apollo (and other space) artifacts are already in private hands. In the same Space Exploration sale, a flown Apollo 13 flight plan sold for $275,000 and a flown flight plan sheet from Apollo 11 brought $50,000. They went to private collectors. An American institution paid $68,750 for an Apollo 11 Collins crew-signed and flown to the moon emblem.
