An 18k gold Omega Speedmaster belonging to astronaut Alan Bean has sold for $50,000.
The lot led a sale of space memorabilia at Bonhams New York on April 21.
 Alan Bean was an astronaut on the Apollo 12 mission |
Bean was presented with the watch in 1969 by then president Richard Nixon. It's one of 30, 28 of which were given to Apollo astronauts. Nixon and his vice-president, Spiro Agnew, kept the other two.
It's engraved: "Astronaut Alan Bean - to mark man's conquest of space with time, through time, on time. Skylab Mission II [III] Apollo 12."
Cassandra Hatton, director of history of science and technology at Bonhams, says: "Omega has a long history of being the watch of choice for the US Space Program, and has been the first and only watch to have been worn on the moon."
The space-flown checklist used for Edward White's EVA (Extravehicular Activity) during the Gemini 4 mission (1965) sold for $47,500.
The event was the first American spacewalk, following on from cosmonaut Alexey Leonev's spacewalk a few months earlier. The lot documents the list of tasks to be carried out before, during and after the extremely risky manoeuvre.
We have an exciting selection of space memorabilia available.
Please sign up to our free newsletter to receive exciting news about memorabilia auctions.
