After a major legal battle, a woman has made nearly $2 million (Rs 16 crore) off a NASA artefact she purchased at a seized assets auction. Nancy Lee Carlson came into possession of Neil Armstrong’s moon rock bag after purchasing it for $995 (Rs 83,000) at a seized assets auction on behalf of the US Marshals Service.
Soon after, she sent it to NASA for authentication, which confirmed its historical value but then refused to return it. Carlson began a mental legal battle with the government agency, which she eventually won and gained possession of the artefact.
Then, in 2017, she decided to sell the piece of history via auction. As the first person to walk on the moon, Armstrong’s memorabilia was expected to fetch a nice chunk of money despite its relatively plain appearance.
Experts had estimated the bag’s value at around $2 million (Rs 16.7 crore) and expected it to fetch at least that amount at auction. The bag was used by the astronaut to collect exogeological samples from the moon while on the surface of Earth’s most popular space rock.
On July 20, 2017, the 48th anniversary of the Apollo 11 space mission that made Armstrong a household name, Carlson’s bag was auctioned off at the Space Exploration Auction in New York City. She fetched a large sum of money from the sale of the 12-by-8.5-centimetre bag.
The bag is simply marked “LUNAR SAMPLE RETURN” and is white with a thick brass zipper. Despite its visual simplicity, Carlson was able to fetch $1.8 million (Rs 15.03 crore) for her less than a thousand-dollar investment at the July auction. The object was introduced by the auctioneer as “an exceptionally rare artefact of mankind’s greatest achievement,” Phys Org reports.
It took just five minutes for bids to skyrocket and the item was eventually sold to an anonymous buyer. It may be surprising that such an important piece of American and scientific history was relegated to one person’s private collection, and so it should be.
Armstrong’s collection bag was supposed to be carefully preserved, but a clerical error landed the piece in a storage box at the Johnson Space Center. On the way out, the centre offered it to the owner of a space museum in Kansas, who gratefully accepted it. He was later arrested and convicted of theft, fraud, and money laundering while the bag rotted in a box of seized evidence.
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