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Piece of the Moon for Sale

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the thats-an-expensive-piece-of-rock dept.

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."

13 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Gonna go someday by Cap'nMike · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hope that in a few years the guy who buys this will be kicking himself for wasting money on a rock, instead of saving for a trip to the moon which could be practical in 10 years.

    --
    Celebrities are like ads, if we all ignore them, they'll just go away.
  2. My Moon Rocks?!?! by trotski · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The american public payed millions of dollars of taxes to send a man to the moon and bring back moon rocks. Therefore, I find it strange and wrong that moon rocks can be in private hands.

    Everybody paid to bring the rocks here, and therefore these rocks should belong to all American people, not to private owners.

    --

    "Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
    1. Re:My Moon Rocks?!?! by Czernobog · · Score: 4, Funny

      The spanish public payed millions of dubloons(?) of taxes to send a man to the Indies and bring back spices/riches/evidence of life/rocks. Therefore, I find it strange and wrong that spices/riches/evidence of life/rocks can be in private hands.

      Everybody paid to bring the spices/riches/evidence of life/rocks here, and therefore these spices/riches/evidence of life/rocks should belong to all Spanish people, not to private owners.

      Nevermind that Isabella ruthlessly stripped the Spaniards of their property at every opportune moment and with every handy excuse and that Colombus was Genoese....

      --
      /. Where the truth
  3. profit.. by gl4ss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. take some dirt from your backyard.
    2. put it in a fancy glass thingy.
    3. sell it.
    4. PROFIT!!!!!

    this particular piece may be authentic but i'm pretty sure that somebody has done the 1.2.3.4 thing above for moonrocks. i mean, if there's something thats worthless as it is but worth something because it is there are people who will try to cheat out some of that cash going around. i mean at one point there was something like many tons of the cross that jesus carries in bible circulating around collectors, if somebody doesn't go to moon soon enough there will be such a situation in time with moonrocks as well(and probably will be anyways for the "ah but this is from the first mission" rocks).

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  4. eBay will not allow moon rock auctions. by localroger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They also disallowed auctions of all WTC memorabilia (even that ashtray you really bought there in 1982) shortly after 9/11, and auctions of anything even claiming to be Shuttle Columbia debris before most of it hit the ground.

    --
    Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
  5. Scientists? by John+Seminal · · Score: 4, Funny
    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.

    Why do break in's always have Nixon's name somewhere in the paragraph?

    --

    Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."

    1. Re:Scientists? by NortWind · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's an interesting story, but you've been given a version with a strange spin on it. The moon rock was given by Nixon, not to the country but to a military dictator the US supported, Gen. Osvaldo Lopez Arellano. That dictator didn't recogize it as being valuable, and gave it to one of his colonels. There it sat, in private hands, until a US business man, Alan Rosen, started snooping around. He eventually found the owner, and bought the rock for $50,000. He was pretty surprised to find out when he took the rock in to be viewed by a potential buyer that it was to be confiscated. You can read about it in some detail here and here.

  6. I'll be impressed by Pingular · · Score: 4, Funny

    if you can sell me some jupiter rock.

    --

    When anger rises, think of the consequences.
    Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
  7. Waste Of Money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I predict that within 10 years Wal-Mart will carry moon rocks imported from the Chinese, who will have a mine on the moon by then and bring rock back by the ton. Get ready for "pet moon rocks" and "moon mood rings" on the shopping channel too.

  8. It's all about the brand by sssmashy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    DeBeers claims that a "natural" diamond is worth much, much more than a visually indistinguishable and chemically identical diamond made in the lab last Tuesday. It is priceless simply because it came from deep inside the earth, formed by intense heat and pressure over millions of years.

    Similarly, a few tiny chunks of the moon are worth $50,000 while a chemically identical chunk of rock from Colorado (olivine, with traces of ilmenite and iron oxides) is basically worthless (maybe $5/ton if you bought itin bulk).It's all about the brand, baby. Symbolism sells.

    1. Re:It's all about the brand by S.Lemmon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      not really. First anyone can buy a natural diamond so they're hardly "priceless", and second DeBeers has artificially inflated the prices for years with their monopoly over the supply (diamonds are actually not nearly as rare as they'd like people to believe).

      Don't be fooled - DeBeers is scared sh*tless by the idea that jewel quality diamonds can now be manufactured! They look at artificial diamonds in much the same way Microsoft looks at Linux. At first despairingly, and then - as the threat becomes harder to ignore - with a massive FUD campaign aimed at convincing people artificial diamonds are somehow inferior.

  9. I presume, and so can you... by baileytal · · Score: 5, Funny
    From the description at the auction site:
    Molded into the [moon-rock shaped blob of] resin are presumably the tiny fragments and flecks found on the bottom of the Apollo 11 "rock boxes."
    Yeah, $50k USD for a blob of resin with some "presumable" tiny fragments of moon rock.

    To be fair, I think it would be fair to pay with 50 "presumable" $1000 bills encased in a big blob of resin shaped like a sucker.

    --
    Never at a loss for words... because of the voices.
  10. Re:Legal? by kittenthief · · Score: 5, Interesting

    doing some further research I found this in a NASA newsletter...
    "The OIG's investigative arm conducts criminal and regulatory investigations in which NASA is a victim. Recently, we have investigated: MOON ROCKS Finally, in an ongoing investigation we seized a desk set that allegedly contained scraps of lunar material. The set, which was owned by a dealer in rare objects, had originally been given to a retiring NASA engineerin 1970. Against NASA policy, the engineer's coworkers had worked some scraps of lunar materials into the desk." Newletter HERE strange that its being acutioned, but NASA Seems to have previously confiscated it???? I know I won't be bidding...not that I could :))