Three reels of tape containing footage of the first moonwalk sold for just more than $1.8 million dollars at a Saturday auction.
Las Vegan Gary George, a former NASA intern, had purchased the tapes for about $218 dollars in the 1970s at a government surplus sale, intending to sell them to television stations for recording use.
In 2008, he discovered that three of the tapes contained complete footage of the moon landing and moonwalk.
While the tapes had been described as ‘lost,’ NASA recently released a statement clarifying that it didn’t “lose” the moon landing tapes, as live data had been relayed to multiple sources and recorded at ground stations in California and Australia in July 1969.
Sotheby’s said that the three tapes sold for $1.82 million to a private bidder.