Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

6 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. 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"
  2. 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.
  3. 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:[.]
  4. 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.

  5. 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.
  6. 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 :))