Moon photos go up for auction!3 min read

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Recently, we examined a meteorite-struck doghouse that sold for nearly $44,000 at an auction house. Well, it seems like people don’t like space photos very much. The highest selling one only sold for about 1/3 the doghouse’s price, at about $13,000. Why could this be?

The value of space photos

Well, first of all, most of these space photos are automatically accessible to the public through the internet. If you go through a thorough Google search, I’m sure you will be able to find one of these photos. But then why do they fetch any value, you ask? Well, much like the NFT craze we saw in the past two years, the person who buys it essentially owns all rights to the photo. So from now on, if I wanted to take the original picture and post it on the internet, I would have to ask for permission from the person who is now the owner.

NFTs stand for non-fungible tokens. They are at its base, a data file floating around the internet. When someone wants to sell it, they put it up for auction, and then sell the rights and the file to the buyer. Tweets, gifs, online photos, you name it! As long as it’s a data file, it’s out there, you can sell it. Famous people’s tweets go for almost 3 million dollars. While there is an argument that there is nothing to owning the file when it is circulating on the web, NFT buyers sure find value in what they are buying.

But, since these pictures are already circulating, just the joy of owning them is what attracts buyers. This is much like the doghouse we saw in our last article. When someone feels that “I own it, it’s mine now” is what attracts buyers to a photo or a doghouse like this. These photos on sale are all from the US’s landings on the moon over 50 years ago.

History for sale

Another thing that could be attracting buyers is that they are grabbing a piece of history. US President John F. Kennedy promised the American people in 1961 that they would get to the moon before the end of the decade. While he didn’t live to see it, the US achieved it, and when someone grabs a memory, a photo, of that event or that historical few years, it means something.

Apollo 11 was the first moon mission that landed successfully on the surface of the moon. The three astronauts on the mission were Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins. While Collins stayed in the moon’s orbit, Aldrin and Armstrong touched down on the surface. Armstrong was the first person to step foot on the moon. That faithful day, Armstrong muttered the historic words, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Aldrin stepped down right after him. For many Americans, it marked a decade-long struggle and catching up to the USSR in the Space Race. This was a key turning point in the Cold War, where the Communist USSR was fighting the Capitalist US. It touched down on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, in front of millions of Americans glued to their television screens.

While most may not find value in these space photos, Buzz Aldrin must have loved being the first person to take a photo on the moon!