Skip to content
Pursuits
Collecting

Apollo 11 Moonwalk Tapes Sell for $1.8 Million at Auction

  • Tapes Make Over 8-Thousand-Fold Return At Sotheby’s Auction
  • NASA Intern Initially Purchased Tapes for $217.77 in 1976
Astronaut Edwin Aldrin walks on the moon on July 20, 1969.

Astronaut Edwin Aldrin walks on the moon on July 20, 1969.

Photographer: NASA/Newsmakers

A NASA intern who paid $217.77 for the original videotapes of the Apollo 11 moonwalk sold them $1.8 million at a Sotheby’s auction Saturday.

That’s 8,000 times what intern Gary George paid for the 1,150 reels of tape in a government surplus auction at the Johnson Space Center in 1976. The tapes, 2 hours and 24 minutes long, includes Neil Armstrong’s famous declaration: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”