Apollo 11 lunar samples bag at Sotheby’s auction sells for $1.8M

The Sotheby’s space memorabilia auction (see earlier posting) went off on Thursday and there were a number of : Apollo 11 moon rock bag sells for $1.8M at Sotheby’s space auction | collectSPACE.

The most prominent item for sale was the Apollo 11 Contingency Lunar Sample Return bag, which was used by Neil Armstrong on the Apollo 11 mission to hold some samples gather soon after landing in case there was a problem and they had to leave the Moon in a hurry. The bag material is embedded wit lunar dust. The collectSPACE article recounts the interesting tale of how the bag, which was once sold for $995, ended up on the auction block and sold for $1,812,500.

Some other items also went for significant amounts:

After the lunar sample return bag, the next highest amount commanded by the 173 lots Sotheby’s auctioned Thursday was $275,000 for the flown flight plan used by the crew on the 1970 Apollo 13 mission.

Nice to see that the Chesley Bonestell illustration for a Wernher von Braun book went for $125,000.

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“Stone Architecture on Mars, Demonstrating Mars’ Two-Thirds Less Gravity than Earth’s”- Chesley Bonestell. “10½ by 11 inch oil on artist’s board, signed “Chesley Bonestell” lower right. Verso stamped “Chesley Bonestell”, titled on verso in pen in Bonestell’s hand, with additional pencil notation reading “In 1985 I realized that the columns should be 1¾ times thicker (measure closest col. at base) than they are in the ptg.”