A white teflon-coated jacket worn by astronaut Buzz Aldrin during the Apollo 11 mission to the moon in 1969 sold for $2.7 million at a Sotheby’s auction on Tuesday. fetching the highest price among dozens of rare memorabilia tracking his history of space exploration.
Aldrin, now 92, has had a long career as an astronaut, joining the US space agency, NASA, in 1963 after being a pilot in the Air Force. Within three years, he had performed the first successful “spacewalk” on the Gemini 12 mission. Then, on July 20, 1969, millions of people watched on television as he became the second man to set foot on the moon, some 20 years later. minutes after Neil Armstrong, who declared it “a giant leap for mankind”.
The custom jacket Aldrin wore on that mission sold after a nine-minute series of intense bidding, with the auctioneer calling it “the most valuable American space artifact ever sold at auction”. (The clothes worn by the other two Apollo 11 astronauts from that mission are the property of the Smithsonian Museum.)
In all, 68 of Aldrin’s 69 lots sold for $8 million on Tuesday at Sotheby’s in Manhattan in an auction that lasted more than two hours.
Derek Parsons, a spokesman for Sotheby’s, said the sale of Aldrin was the “most valuable space exploration auction ever held”. It broke the record set by an auction of objects belonging to Armstrong, who died in 2012, but the latter astronaut’s total collection still holds the overall record.
The most coveted artifacts sold this week traveled to the Moon and back more than 50 years ago. A complete summary of the Apollo mission flight plan sold for $819,000.
Only one lot had no buyer. It included the small broken circuit breaker that nearly landed the Apollo 11 crew on the moon and the crumpled aluminum pen that Aldrin used as a quick fix for takeoff. Bidding stuck at $650,000, far below the auction’s $1 million estimate.
Aldrin said in a statement: “It felt like the right time to share these items with the world, which for many are symbols of a historic moment, but for me they have always been personal reminders of a life dedicated to science and exploration.”
Among the items sold at auction were also golden lifetime passes to Major League baseball games, for $7,560, and an MTV Video Music Awards figurine inspired by the iconic image of Aldrin placing the American flag on the surface of the moon, which was sold for $88,200.
The Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest honor for civilians, bestowed on Aldrin by President Richard Nixon, went for $277,200. These medals don’t appear often at auctions, Parsons said.
There was also a letter dated December 10, 1973, written by Armstrong, which cost $21,420. In it, the former astronaut tried to dissuade Aldrin from turning his memoir into a movie: “I can’t remember a biography of someone alive that was made into a good, high-quality movie.”
Aldrin didn’t change his mind. The biopic was released three years later.
Although that film was not a critical success, Aldrin inspired the name Buzz Lightyear, the animated character in Pixar’s “Toy Story” films.
Ten of the 69 lots in the auction came with a non-fungible token, or NFT, a unique digital identifier for authenticity. Others, such as flight plans with a list of items to be taken into space — a helmet, tissues, also snacks — received Aldrin’s autograph and the phrase “Fly to the Moon”.
More space artifacts have been auctioned since the 2012 passage of a law allowing astronauts to keep and sell their space memorabilia, said Cassandra Hatton, an expert at Sotheby’s. Prior to the adoption of the law, NASA tried several times to block the sale of such items, such as James Lovell’s Apollo 13 expedition checklist.
“Before that, it was a risky situation,” Hatton said. “People were selling things and there was really no clarity. So there was always this kind of concern that maybe NASA would close an auction.”
A 2018 audit of the space agency found that NASA’s inconsistent record keeping resulted in the loss of a “significant amount” of its assets.
In June, NASA lawyers stopped the sale of dead cockroaches that had ingested moon dust. Before the sale was suspended, bids for the insect trio reached $40,000.
Today, Sotheby’s space auctions are its most popular category, attracting a broad audience of bidders, Hatton said. He added that the price ranges made the items more affordable than other valuables such as artwork. The auction house has sold items belonging to other astronauts, including a small white bag that Armstrong used to collect samples of moon rocks, which brought in $1.8 million in 2017.
Hatton said he believes the fascination with space artifacts and missions to the Moon, the last in 1972, persists because of the importance of these discoveries in human history.
“It’s a moment that reminds us of everything we can do,” she said. “We can achieve the almost impossible, like escaping our fate of being stranded on this planet. We can do amazing things.”
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves.
