Historic Space Auction
Crazy astronaut swag hits the auction block, prompts moon questions and sunglass fever
Bits of history are going, going, gone in an online auction held by Bonhams' New York auction house. The company calls the Space History Sale "some of the very best space history material on the market to date."
Among the 325 pieces of moon memorabilia are signed crew portraits, astronaut memos and documents, and several lunar photographs that only seem to further question the veracity of the landing, plus a pair of aviator sunglasses that astronaut Wally Schirra wore during training and "while driving various sports cars" and this really cool Apollo 15 baseball cap.
Also listed is a two-page entry from the Apollo 11 log book — which the auction house says is "[effectively] equal to a log entry from Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World" — with written observations from Buzz Aldrin.
The United States Congress passed legislation just last year that explicitly gave astronauts and crew members "full ownership rights" to the artifacts they had collected decades ago, and Bonhams' is the first "major auction" since the law went into effect.