In 1976, Gary George was a college engineering student and former NASA intern when he spent just $217.77 on about 1,150 reels of magnetic tape at a government surplus auction in Houston. He bought them because he thought he could resell the tapes to television stations. But he would have never imagined that these three reels contained some of the clearest surviving recordings of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon during Apollo 11. More than four decades later, those three tapes sold at Sotheby’s for $1.82 million, according to reports.
Gary George had previously worked as a cooperative engineering intern at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. In June 1976, he attended a government surplus auction at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston. Among the items was a huge lot of roughly 1,150 reels of magnetic tape marked as belonging to NASA and he paid $217.77 for the entire lot. Sotheby's says George sold some of the tapes and also donated others but three reels changed his life forever.
His father noticed the words ‘Apollo 11’
The three important reels had labels identifying them as “APOLLO 11 EVA | July 20, 1969 REEL 1–3.” George's father, who was interested in the space program, noticed the labels and suggested that his son keep them. “I had no idea there was anything of value on them,” George later recalled. “I was selling them to TV stations just to record over.”
The three reels contained first-generation recordings of the Apollo 11 lunar EVA, or extravehicular activity — essentially the historic moonwalk. The footage includes Neil Armstrong taking his first steps on the lunar surface, Buzz Aldrin moving around in the moon's low gravity, the astronauts planting the American flag, collecting lunar samples and speaking with then-President Richard Nixon.
