Gold Magazine April - May 2013, Issue 25 | Page 79

space memorabilia

R

eminisce, if you will. Transport yourselves
back to July 20, 1969. Where were you?
What were you doing? For at least 500
million people the world over, this day
remains indelibly ingrained on their minds:
they bore witness – with great trepidation, excitement, and wonder – to NASA’s
Apollo 11 mission successfully landing on
the Moon. Neil Armstrong’s “one small
step for a man” onto this otherwise unexplored celestial orb certainly did engender
one “giant leap for mankind”. And, as
this pioneering event is immortalised as a
mnemonic constellation in the minds of
individuals who watched on as the world
moved on, the unending thirst to own a
piece of this history has intensified astronomically.
How much so, you ask? Coinciding
with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11
mission, the navigational chart utilised by
Armstrong and fellow Moon-treader Buzz
Aldrin to determine their precise position
on the moon’s surface sold in 2009 at Bonhams New York for €172,000, complete
with Aldrin’s signature and, incredibly,
residue of moon dust. The piece, which
had previously been housed at, and impec-

cably maintained by, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum
in Washington, DC, had been tagged
with an expected selling price bracket of €55,000 to €70,000. A simple
piece of space memorabilia turns
suddenly and spectacularly into
a shooting star, illuminating the
present investment f