Saucy Playboy pictures taken to the Moon have sold for $400,000 at auction.
They were sold alongside a space hammer that went for $812,500 in the sale of Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean‘s mission-used items.
The American became the fourth person to walk on the Moon in 1969 as part of the second US mission to the lunar surface.
His cuff-mounted checklist featured detailed instructions on mission tasks, as well as hidden Playboy magazine images and hand-drawn cartoons secretly inserted by fellow astronauts before launch.
The highest-selling item in Dallas-based Heritage Auctions’ $3.1M sale was Bean’s surface-used geological hammer.
The tool became part of Apollo history on November 19, 1969, when Bean famously used it to free a fuel cask during deployment of an experiments package on the lunar surface.
Bean later declared, “Don’t ever come to the Moon without a hammer.”
Brad Palmer, director of space exploration at Heritage Auctions, said: “The incredible result for this hammer is a clear reflection of the interest in items from lunar missions, but the demand for items that actually made it to the surface of the Moon is exponentially greater.”
Read the full article here
