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Apollo 11 Flag Swatch Goes Unsold At L.A. Auction
According to an Associated Press report, a "strip of fabric shorn from the flag planted on the moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts pulled in a top bid of $60000 at a Los Angeles auction, but didn't meet a minimum price so it won't be sold." Another $35,000 would have nabbed it, but — caveat emptor — the strip of fabric under discussion is one that never went to the moon itself, but rather was snipped off before the rest of the flag was stuffed into a tube for the mission.
that *is* a lot of money for a scrap of cloth.
If it didn't go to the moon, who cares that it even went to auction?
Somebody wouldn't settle for less than $100K for a scrap of cloth that almost was sent to the moon?
I'll settle for a much more reasonable $10K for a scrap of cloth from underwear resembling the underwear worn by Neil Armstrong.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
FFS just type 'buyer beware', it's easier and not in a dead language. Quit the pathetic attempts to sound smart by using latin.
for the rest of the flag the "did" go to the moon (wink, wink...) and was shown on TV.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
For Sale: Lady Gaga's Underwear
Condition: Slightly unused
Description: These underwear were owned by Gaga herself but never worn. It is not clear if she actually ever touched them or even knew she bought them. But they were hers for sure.
Bidding starts at $1000
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
well that *is* a lot of money for a scrap of cloth.
Actually you get a little more than the scrap of cloth.
"Moser said he had Neil Armstrong sign a photo of the flag planted on the moon when the astronaut returned to Earth and he kept the picture and his rescued scrap of flag together in his NASA office until he retired in 1990. But after hanging onto the photo and flag-swatch assemblage all these years, he finally decided to put them up to auction.."
http://news.yahoo.com/swatch-moon-bound-flag-unsold-la-auction-032542272.html
the rest of the flag went to Studio #2 in Hollywood.
If it didn't go to the moon, who cares that it even went to auction?
The summary conveniently fails to mention that it comes with an autograph of the first man to set foot on the moon, one of the men who actually raised the flag on the moon. The autograph is on a photo of the flag raising so the flag scrap seems to be something to enhance the signature.
that came off the same roll of fabric. This little bit is also just a bit of that roll that stayed behind. Sure, it has a sig, but it could just as well be another flag that was signed. Guess it is worth what a fool will pay for it.
!
Just like the 1000's of flags that came off the same roll of fabric. This little bit is also just a bit of that roll that stayed behind. Sure, it has a sig, but it could just as well be another flag that was signed. Guess it is worth what a fool will pay for it.
Actually this scrap comes from the guy who was in charge of creating the moon flag apparatus. So the scrap does have a pretty good paper trail as coming from the flag that made it to the moon.
"Mr. Moser, then a 30-year-old mechanical engineer, was put in charge of designing a flag mechanism that could not only fit into the lunar module and survive the flight, but also make the flag appear to fly on the windless moon. His solution involved two sections of a staff, a telescoping tube and a nylon flag bought at a local housing goods store (Sears, he thinks). But in order for the flag to fit the staff, its edges needed to be trimmed. “They were throwing it all in the trash,” Mr. Moser recalled of the remnants in a recent interview, “so I picked it up out of the trash can, mounted it and had Neil Armstrong sign it.” Forty-two years later, Mr. Moser is auctioning off those flag remnants."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/science/space/10moon.html
I suppose every time something historically grand is about to take place, people scramble to make sure that pieces of that history is kept for posterity (or fetch bucket-loads of cash at auctions in 50 years time). A part of this is sickening and the other is endearing.
If this was a chunk of the Berlin-wall, it might fetch a different price for starters, but would probably be sold due to the amount of frantic collectors for cold war memorabilia. This might just show us that, at this point in time, we just aren't that interested in the old space programs. Maybe in another 50 years that strip of flag will fetch (equivalent of the time) a couple of million dollars (or whatever currency is in use at the time).
*ducks*
Anyway, as is usual these days, I think this is just a sign of something else currently trending.
"I'm taking this loop off." - Jack O'Neill
Another piece of cloth that was made from material that was grown on the same field as the one that produced the material for the flag! Bid starts at $10000
Maybe in another 50 years that strip of flag will fetch (equivalent of the time) a couple of million dollars (or whatever currency is in use at the time).
Oh it will. Oh yes, it will. When sold as scrap nylon.
(just look at inflation).
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
If I could afford it, hell, why not?
This is a piece of the flag that went up for the first moon landing. I don't care if it is the flag of another nation. I find it presumptuous to devalue the remnant because it never went to the moon. Heck, it's presumptuous to think that many people will ever own anything that actually went to the moon. It is even more absurd to assume that someone would buy it for its future selling price. The fact remains that it was part of humanities first foray to another planet. (And the Earth-Moon system is essentially a double planet system.) It is an important piece of history that says more about our future than almost any artifact dug out of the soil of our home planet.
To the nay-sayer's: just stuff it. You clearly have no appreciation of how important this achievement was. And it was unbelievably important since, within a few decades of achieving heavier than air flight, we managed to reach another world!
On an objective scale, nothing bigger than a subatomic particle has any intrinsic value.
Going to the moon was essentially pointless, frivolous and meaningless.
And yet millions of people around the world watched it, and wept for joy because for one brief moment, our reach did not exceed our grasp, and we touched the heavens.
If the thought of having a connection to that astonishing moment - and the men involved in it, the frail apes who walked on another planet - doesn't embiggen your soul, then honestly, I pity you. You may one day have $100,000 in your pocket, but if you can't envision spending it on something like this, then you'll always be impoverished.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So not only did this flag not go to the moon, but it was actually handled by an engineer who didnt go to the moon either??
Now that really turns the story around
Some have it, some don't have it... the Real Stuff it takes to have been on the Moon. This piece of fabric clearly didn't, and was consequently left behind.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Posting as AC just in case there is a double secret statute of limitations which has not run out.... In 1969-1970, NASA put the Apollo 11 command module and some other items into a trailer and took them on a tour of the state capitols. When it came to my state, my family went to have a look. I remember walking down the aisle in the trailer. The command module was separated from the walkway by a small rope - nothing else - and was only a couple feet away. I was in my early teens, so naturally I leaned over the rope and had a feel of the heat shield. The surface was blackened, torched, very brittle, and when I scratched it some of it came off under my nails. I looked around guiltily, but there was no security to speak of, so I went back to our car and scraped out the heat shield into a discarded candy wrapper and folded it up carefully. Later I put the stuff into a little dimestore picture frame with a short typed description of what it was. Now the tape has yellowed and the text is a little faded, but there is a piece of that magic summer of 1969 on my shelf.
Come on! Who cares if that strip never went to the moon. The rest of the flag that was stuffed into the tube never went to the moon either. It went to a sound stage in the New Mexico desert. Everybody knows that!
You mean Apollo 11 actually went to the moon? I won't believe it until Optimus Prime tells me.
I personally think it's more interesting that somebody was offered $60,000 for it and they declined.
How much for a swatch of the MTV flag they planted on the moon?
(It's been seen more times on TV.)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
If it was a chunk of the Berlin Wall, it'd be fucking worthless. The Berlin Wall was an extremely large thing and was broken into many pieces that are sold all over the world. Unless it's a very large piece of the wall (like, at least the size of a person) and it is covered with some of the known graffiti that was popular on the wall, then a chunk of the Berlin Wall is worth about as much as a chunk of any other rock laying around. The only market for pieces of the Berlin Wall today are in selling to sucker tourists, the same way those stupid "collector plates" you see sold on television have no value, but will get a quick first sale to some idiot decorating their house in Andy Griffith commemorative collector dinner plates.
The discovery of the fabled 14th stripe....
If it never made it to the moon it is just another worthless scrap piece of fabric; the whole point of owning space memorabilia is to have something that actually went into space or came from space; and not some discarded scrap of fabric that they cut out because the flag did not fit on the flag holding apparatus. Honestly it sounds like the guys who has this scrap fabric spin a snake oil salesman tale about it an try to get some dumba$$ to buy it.
This guy was a US Government employee at the time, right? And the flag was paid for by NASA, right?
So what the HELL is he doing with it? Oh ... yeah, he stole it. Right, I missed that part, doh.
So he's selling stolen US Gummint property? That's clever of him.
So somebody desecrated the flag and wants to profit from it? The worst part is that the flag flying on the moon is a desecrated one! WTF?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I'm no lawyer but trash may not be free to grab until you put it out on the curb for pickup.
In any case it sounded like his employer was quite aware of what he was doing, at the least there may have been implicit consent.
FWIW, a wiki search shows Neil Armstrong autographs going for as much as $27,000.
Man never landed on the moon. Us, china, russia. None.
The narrative was done long time ago little did they know that there will be youtube where you can find the tue evidence not cnn, abc or fox nor dicovery or history channel.
Any 6th grader can understand that man did not land on the moon. shadow, radiation belt, edited footage no interview by armstrong on and on and on
Nice try though.
Well, in a way, we are glad we beat the russians. But besides that... stop this none sense
This is to the comment police here at slashdot for banning my comment.
watch 'funny thing happen on the way to the moon' then
watch 'astronounts gone wild.'
But hey, you may be a robot and not a human. If you are a robot, then you will not understand what I am saying so please disregard this message.
If you are a human being then I am sorry to see you in such a zombie like state of mind. Watch the movie 1984 also for desert.