Topline
Samples of lunar dust collected by Neil Armstrong during Apollo 11, the mission that first put men on the moon, sold for $504,375 at auction Wednesday – far below pre-sale estimates – after NASA fought the seller in court to keep the dust and lost.
The lunar dust samples sold for more than $500,000 at auction on Wednesday.
Key Facts
Armstrong collected the dust in 1969 just after he took humanity’s first steps on the moon, which were memorably recorded with his now-famous quote, “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” according to Bonhams.
The six-figure final price tag was far below the pre-auction estimate, with the auction house expecting to fetch between $800,000 and $1.2 million for the five dust samples and the NASA container they are held in.
The winning bid was $400,000, and the final price includes fees and the buyer’s premium, Bonhams told Forbes.
The price is surprisingly low for the dust, which was confirmed to be authentic by NASA – the lunar bag the dust was packaged in on Apollo 11 when the mission returned to Earth sold for $1.8 million in 2017 (it only contained particles of moon material.)
Bonhams is “thrilled” with the result, the auction house’s fine books and manuscripts specialist Adam Stackhouse told Forbes in a statement, adding that the auction of the dust was unprecedented and “generated great interest and strong bids.”
Key Background
The dust was sold by Nancy Lee Carlson, a lawyer from Michigan, who spent $995 on what was labeled as a “flown zippered lunar sample return bag with lunar dust” in a U.S. Marshal’s auction in 2015. Carlson sent the bag off to NASA to confirm its authenticity, only for the space agency to refuse to return it upon realizing its ties to Apollo 11. Carlson sued NASA for wrongful seizure of property, and a judge ruled in her favor in 2016 and ordered NASA to return the bag and the lunar samples inside. Prior to the U.S. Marshal auction, it’s unclear when NASA lost track of the sample. In 2002 it was documented as being in the possession of Max Ary, a space museum co-founder in Kansas who was convicted of selling stolen artifacts. The moon dust ended up at the auction where Carlson purchased it after it was compounded in 2003.
Big Number
$2.9 million. That’s the record price paid at auction for space exploration memorabilia, realized by a Soviet-era space capsule in 2011. It had been used in a series of unmanned tests leading up to the launch of Vostok I, which took cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961.
Tangent
The dust’s auction runs counter to the trend of space memorabilia increasing in popularity — and price — over the past few years. The “Billionaire Space Race,” or the private space ventures of wealthy businessmen like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, has “stirred up the market” for space material at auction, Bonham specialist Adam Stackhouse told Forbes in March.
Further Reading
The Moon Market: Inside The Multimillion-Dollar Craze For Space And Apollo 11 Collectibles (Forbes)
Apollo 11’s 50th Anniversary: The Facts And Figures Behind The $152 Billion Moon Landing (Forbes)
