Antique house Christie's is marking the 30th anniversary of the first moonwalk with a massive auction of memorabilia from the U.S. and Russian space programs, including one of Neil Armstrong's Apollo spacesuits and mission artifacts from several other astronauts.
Christie's will auction off the merchandise -- said to be "one of the most diverse collections of astronaut memorabilia ever to be offered to the public" -- on Saturday, September 18 at its Christie's East saleroom in New York's Upper East Side. If all of the more than 300 lots offered bring their estimated prices in auction, the total proceeds could reach $1.12 million or higher.
"We were approached by a private collector who had a private collection," said Richard Austin, head of books and manuscripts at Christie's East. "We thought building a sale around that collection would make a nice event, especially in light of the 30th anniversary of the moon landing."
As a result, Christie's hired an agent to contact the astronauts, their families and other parties likely to own materials that might be willing to contribute items to the sale catalog.
"He'd worked with several of the astronauts before," Austin said. "Most were very eager to work with us."
Although Austin would not reveal the identity of the collector who started the ball rolling, he said the man had been collecting for about 15 years.
The collection will be available for public viewing at Christie's East every afternoon for the week leading up to the sale.
Only one Neil Armstrong suit available
Among the more interesting items on the block, the Neil Armstrong spacesuit was expected to fetch a price of $60,000 to $80,000. The training suit never left the ground, but is custom-fitted as were all the pressure garment assemblies commissioned by NASA for the Apollo astronauts, and is one of only 14 of its type.
According to Christie's, material related to Armstrong is especially rare due to the small number of missions the first man on the moon actually participated in. Furthermore, the right of first refusal exercised by the Smithsonian Institute over all space-program paraphernalia actually flown on missions contributes to this scarcity, leaving the suit being auctioned off "perhaps the only Armstrong suit ever available in private hands."
Together with autographed materials across the board and an "extraordinarily rare" 1911 manuscript by Konstantin Tsiolkovski, the "father of astronautics," Austin said the Armstrong suit was one of the items receiving strong advance interest from potential buyers.
Spoons, wire and the Space Magna Carta
Other astronaut materials on display include a commemorative Apollo 11 envelope flown by Buzz Aldrin ($30,000), James Irwin's Apollo 15 dining spoon ($4,000) and a signed photograph of then-Prince Hussein of Jordan to Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper ($500).
The oldest item from the U.S. space program in the sale is a 1958 engineering proposal from North American Aviation for the "Little Joe" rocket, known as "Hyride" at the time. The 21-page photocopy includes several black-and-white photographs and is expected by Christie's to go for about $1,000 to $1,500.
Representing the Soviet side of the space race, Christie's has several items from the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz docking mission, which helped pioneer international cooperation in space. These materials range from a bundle of wire from the Apollo command module to an extremely rare copy of the "Space Magna Carta" commemorating the event. Only four copies of the document, signed by two astronauts and two cosmonauts aboard the Apollo, exist, leading the auction house to speculate that it might fetch $80,000 to $120,000.
The highest-priced item in the auction is also from the Soviet space program: an SK-1 pressure suit used in the ground training of Vostok cosmonauts. The garment -- "the world's first orbital spacesuit" -- is one of only two in the United States, with the other in the Smithsonian, and one of only 17 in the world. Christie's expects the suit, together with a facsimile of a Vostok ejection seat, to fetch $200,000 or more.
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