# NASA sold moon landing tapes for $217 by accident to an intern **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 2, 2019, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-sold-moon-landing-tapes-for-217-by-accident-to-an-intern/836422 "2019-07-02T22:04:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-sold-moon-landing-tapes-for-217-by-accident-to-an-intern/836422/1 "2019-07-02T22:04:35Z")
And now the owner is going to make a lot by selling them. > **[NASA sold moon landing footage to an intern for $218. Now, the tapes could...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/02/us/nasa-intern-moon-landing-footage-sothebys-auction-trnd/index.html)** > > In 1976, NASA accidentally sold tapes of the moon landing to an intern. Now, Sotheby's will sell the footage at a starting bid of $700,000. Reminds me of the guy who has a tape of most of Super Bowl I that nobody else has. But the NFL won’t buy it from him. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-sold-moon-landing-tapes-for-217-by-accident-to-an-intern/836422/2 "2019-07-02T22:11:50Z")
I don’t think that there was anything accidental about it, they just considered the tapes to be surplus junk even knowing the contents. (Sort of like the beeb with _Doctor Who_ tapes.) ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-sold-moon-landing-tapes-for-217-by-accident-to-an-intern/836422/3 "2019-07-02T22:19:43Z")
that must have been a pretty dumb guy if he thought it was junk. or maybe he asked his bosses and they said to sell the stuff. They could have reused the tapes which was common back then , at least at TV stations. ---
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-sold-moon-landing-tapes-for-217-by-accident-to-an-intern/836422/4 "2019-07-02T22:51:51Z")
That is cool. I was watching a Moon landing hoax TV show just last week interviewing a guy who worked at the relay station that recorded the original tapes. After they were sent by satellite relay to Houston (and losing fidelity at the receiving end) they were mailed to Houston. He talked about how they would have been marked using a shorthand notation making them hard to find by combing through thousands of boxes of tapes. Dennis ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-sold-moon-landing-tapes-for-217-by-accident-to-an-intern/836422/5 "2019-07-02T23:17:12Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > that must have been a pretty dumb guy if he thought it was junk. or maybe he asked his bosses and they said to sell the stuff. Which “guy” “asking his bosses”? These were in a bulk lot at [a government auction](https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/nasa-sold-an-original-moon-landing-video-to-an-intern-i-1836008517): > [@](#): > > Back in June of 1976, NASA sold a bunch of videotapes at a government surplus auction at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, Texas. Gary George, then a NASA intern at the Johnson Space Center nearby, bought 1,150 reels of magnetic video tapes for just $217.77—over $1,200 adjusted for inflation, but still a damn good deal. > Among the 1,150 reels were 65 boxes of high-quality Ampex video reels, 2-inch tapes that went for roughly $260 each at the time. George figured he could sell them to be recorded over and reused by a local TV station, and he did just that with most of the tapes. But thankfully, he held on to the historic ones. > According to Sotheby’s, it was George’s father who first noticed that these tapes might be worth hanging on to for the future. A small label on one of the boxes read, “APOLLO 11 EVA | July 20, 1969 REEL 1 [–3]” and “VR2000 525 Hi Band 15 ips.” Obviously, that was something that should be taken care of, and that’s precisely what they did.