These moon landing tapes are worth at least $1 million

$1.82 million as it turned out… The last of the Moon Landing Anniversary pieces (this time round at least) returned to the theme of the lost tapes and some new ones that had been unearthed.

Written for RedShark, you can read the complete piece here, but here’s an excerpt:

As with anything to do with the moon landing tapes, the story of how they came to auction is worth telling. In 1976, a NASA intern called Gary George bought a single lot of 1150 reels of magnetic tape at a government surplus auction for $217.77. Given that a new reel of 2-inch Ampex tape then cost around $260, his plan was to sell them to local TV stations for reuse and make a tidy profit.

This he duly did, though his father suggested that he hang on to the three boxes with small labels reading “APOLLO 11 EVA | July 20, 1969 REEL 1 [–3]” and “VR2000 525 Hi Band 15 ips” on them. This was remarkably good advice.

Fast forward 32 years to 2008 and a Texas ski club (yes, really) colleague and NASA video engineer mentioned the hunt for the original moon landing tapes, and George was put in contact with NASA. However, reading between the lines of the Sotheby’s listing on this score, an agreement couldn’t be made on their value and, in the end, George had them played twice at a Burbank specialist facility; once to see what they looked like and once to digitise them onto a 1TB hard drive.

The hard drive is included in the auction…