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Piece of the Moon for Sale
Symon Gold writes "A desk set purportedly containing a piece of moon rock is up for auction at Lelands.com. Listing here. The New York Times (free registration required) has a story about the piece--a retirement gift given to Joe Healy, an engineer at NASA's Lunar Receiving Laboratory who worked on the Apollo missions and who died a decade ago. The auction runs until 9 p.m. on December 4th with an opening bid of $50,000."
For Right Price, a Bit of the Moon, Perhaps
By KENNETH CHANG
Published: November 27, 2003
he desk set -- a few pieces of plastic amateurishly glued together -- is battered and scratched. The pen was snapped off years ago. On the left side is a yellowing blob of epoxy in the shape of a rock. On the right is a small plaque: "Presented to Joe Healy from his friends at LRL."
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Cost: at least $50,000, the minimum bid in an Internet auction now under way.
This plain-looking piece -- a retirement gift to Mr. Healy, an engineer at NASA's Lunar Receiving Laboratory who worked on the Apollo missions and who died a decade ago -- is believed to contain some of the rarest material on Earth: fragments of the Moon.
The fragments are small -- specks really, embedded within the epoxy blob, smaller than the air bubbles and harder to spot -- but they nonetheless appear to be the largest sample of Apollo moon rock ever to be offered for sale, at least legally.
"It's got magic attached to it, don't you think?" said Mr. Healy's daughter, Margaret Davis of The Dalles, Ore., who is putting the piece up for sale. "It's really from the Moon."
NASA, however, will not vouch for it. The space agency examined it under a microscope in 1999. In a statement released when the desk set was returned to Mrs. Davis, NASA said that "the particles submitted for testing did not exhibit any characteristic features commonly associated with lunar soil" and that more extensive testing could not be conducted without destroying it.
As of yesterday evening, no one had bid on the item. The auction continues until 9 p.m. on Dec. 4.
"The serious bidders usually don't show their hand until the last day," said Bruce Mauro, acquisitions manager for Leland's Inc., an auction house in Seaford, N.Y., that is handling the auction. "They all lay back in the weeds. If there's going to be a bid on it, it'll probably be then."
(The auction can be viewed at www.lelands.com by clicking on the "Americana" link and then the "Space" link.)
In the three decades since the Apollo landings, NASA has jealously guarded most of the 843 pounds of Moon rock collected by the astronauts. The space agency considers them "national treasures," property of the federal government, although a few pieces were given as gifts to foreign governments.
In September, the United States returned to Honduras a Moon rock that President Richard M. Nixon gave the country in 1973, but that was later stolen and ended up with a dealer in Miami. Last year, three interns at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston stole a safe containing Moon rocks valued at $2.5 million to $7 million. The three pleaded guilty to the theft, and a conspirator, who offered the rocks for sale on the Internet, was convicted at a trial in June.
For legal lunar material, collectors have had to content themselves with rocks brought back by unmanned Soviet probes or with pieces of clothing and equipment stained with Moon dust. Three Russian Moon pebbles sold for $442,500 at Sotheby's in 1993.
When Mr. Healy retired in 1970, his colleagues pulled fragments from a box of Apollo 11 rocks and mixed them into a blob of epoxy shaped like the first Moon rock to be put on public display. The desk set also includes two pieces of Mylar from the Apollo 11 and 12 lunar landers.
Soon thereafter, NASA administrators sent out memorandums telling employees not to give away lunar samples, but no one asked Mr. Healy to return his desk set. He often took it to schools to show it to children.
"He kept it in a shoebox," his daughter, Mrs. Davis, said, "and when he didn't have it out showing it to someone, he had it under his bed."
Over the years, the epoxy, once clear, has turned amber, and Mr. Healy's wife, Cynthia, snapped the pen off one day when she needed something to write with.
With the death of the Healys, the desk set passed to Mrs. Davis, who kept it in a safe-deposit box. She planned to do
They better have been careful not to have taken that piece off of my land. I've got mineral rights, you know.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
now i'm off to the roof with a webcam to see if i can stream that cruise missile as it turns left over stockport and heads towards this IP address...
Yes, I'm serious. Go to www.lunarembassy.com and you can read all about it. The legality is questionable, lawyers have dissected it and the best answer I've seen is "I don't know". So I decided to buy 2 acres on the moon. I figured we'll go there again during my lifetime, so why not try to own a bit. It was only like $40 for two acres...not too bad.
:)
The company IS real, it is not a scam. I have seen the guy on talk shows and in the news, and I received my deeds of ownership. I thought it was cool because if it turns out he doesnt legally own the moon, then I'm only out $40 (not a big deal in the big scheme of things). And if it is real, then I own 2 acres on the moon!
disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the company that sells property on the moon in any way. I'm just a happy customer, its cool