Why NASA's Moonwalk Tapes Sold for $217.77, Then $1.82 Million
In 1976, a lot of used NASA magnetic tape went under the hammer at a government surplus sale in Houston. Three of the reels held the first moonwalk, and 43 years later they sold for more than 8,000 times what the whole lot had cost.
The short version
In June 1976, Gary George, an engineering student and former NASA intern, paid $217.77 for about 1,150 reels of used NASA tape, planning to resell them to TV stations. His father noticed three boxes labeled Apollo 11 EVA, July 20, 1969, so George kept them. NASA's own raw backup tapes were almost certainly erased and reused, and in 2019 Sotheby's sold George's three reels for $1.82 million.
A $217.77 lot at a government surplus sale
In June 1976, at a government surplus auction at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, a student named Gary George made a bid of $217.77. It bought a single lot of about 1,150 reels of used magnetic tape that had belonged to NASA. The price covered the whole lot, which works out to roughly 19 cents a reel, not just the three reels that would later make it famous.
George was a Lamar University engineering student who had earned a cooperative work internship at NASA's Johnson Space Center in June 1973. He was not hunting for history. According to Sotheby's, a new reel of Ampex tape cost about $260 at the time, and because the tape could be recorded over, he planned to sell the used but still usable reels to local TV stations. At roughly 19 cents a reel against $260 new, the resale math was easy to see.
Three boxes with a famous date on them
The surprise came from his father, who noticed that three of the boxes carried a small label: APOLLO 11 EVA, July 20, 1969, reels 1 to 3. EVA is NASA shorthand for extravehicular activity, time spent outside the spacecraft, and July 20, 1969, is the date of the first moonwalk. According to collectSPACE, George had bought the tapes without knowing the Apollo 11 footage was in the lot. Press reports in 2019 said he had already sold some of the other tapes and donated others, to Lamar University and a local church, before the three were spotted. He kept those three.
Sotheby's later described them as three reels of 2-inch Ampex 148 quadruplex videotape, running 45:04, 49:00 and 50:15. In other words, the same professional format George had planned to sell to TV stations for reuse.
Why NASA's own copies could not compete
The reels became valuable partly because NASA's own raw recordings are gone. In 2009, NASA published a final report on its search for the Apollo 11 telemetry tapes, the recordings of the raw signal sent back from the Moon. It concluded that, apart from a few canisters of Apollo 9 tapes, the Apollo-era telemetry tapes no longer exist anywhere. According to NASA engineer Richard Nafzger and press coverage at the time, the 45 tapes that held the Apollo 11 signal were almost certainly erased and put back into use in the early 1980s. Sotheby's noted that when NASA went looking for its original slow-scan videotapes in 2008, it came up empty.
That does not mean the moonwalk was lost. The broadcast survives in other recordings, and George's reels are not the missing telemetry tapes. But it does mean early-generation recordings are scarce. Sotheby's marketed George's tapes as "the earliest, sharpest, and most accurate surviving video images" of the first steps on the Moon. That is the auction house's description rather than an independent ruling, but it was the claim bidders were weighing.
Fifty years to the day
On July 20, 2019, exactly 50 years after the moonwalk, Sotheby's sold the three reels as lot 104 for $1.82 million, against an estimate of $1 million to $2 million. The coverage does not specify whether that figure includes the buyer's premium.
Against the $217.77 George paid in 1976, the sale price is more than 8,000 times larger. That comparison actually understates the gap, since the 1976 price bought roughly 1,150 reels, not three.
What the tapes say about value
The story is a clean example of value being set by what survives rather than by what something cost to make. In 1976, the tape was a commodity, worth whatever a TV station would pay for a reusable reel. Once NASA's own raw recordings were erased, the same kind of tape, carrying the right footage, became one of the few early records of a moment almost everyone recognizes. George's choice to keep three labeled boxes instead of selling them with the rest is what separated a reusable reel from a seven-figure lot. Watch the short video on this page.
Questions people ask
How much did Gary George pay for the Apollo 11 tapes?
$217.77, in June 1976, for a single lot of about 1,150 reels of used NASA magnetic tape at a government surplus auction in Houston. Three of those reels turned out to hold Apollo 11 moonwalk footage.
How much did the Apollo 11 moonwalk tapes sell for at Sotheby's?
$1.82 million, on July 20, 2019, the 50th anniversary of the moonwalk. Sotheby's estimate was $1 million to $2 million.
Did NASA erase the original Apollo 11 tapes?
NASA's 2009 report says the Apollo-era telemetry tapes, which held the raw signal from the Moon, no longer exist, and they were almost certainly erased and reused. The moonwalk broadcast itself survives in other recordings.
Sources
- [Apollo 11]. Original, First-generation NASA Videotape Recordings of the Moon Landing, lot 104Sotheby's · 2019-07-20
- One Small Step, One Rare Recording: See the Moon Landing Like Never BeforeSotheby's · 2019-07
- Apollo 11 50th anniversary auctions result in millions for moon landing memorabiliacollectSPACE · 2019-07-21
- The Apollo 11 Telemetry Data Recordings: A Final ReportNASA · 2009
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