Only Privately Owned Watch Worn on the Moon to Be Auctioned in Boston
Photo courtesy RR Auction
Only 12 men have ever set foot on the moon. All 12 men wore Omega chronograph wristwatches, which remained property of NASA. Col. David Scott, the seventh man on the moon and the first to drive a rover on the lunar surface, brought his own watch as a backup—a Bulova chronograph with a Velcro strap. That watch can now be yours.
Boston-based RR Auction is selling the timepiece, worn by Scott on the Apollo 15 mission, to the highest bidder.
“At the moment of liftoff, I was fully responsible for the mission and the safety of my crew,” Scott said in a release. “Among the decisions I made, the monitoring and use of time was perhaps the most important. Time is of the essence during human lunar expeditions—and exploration time on the surface is limited by the oxygen and water (for cooling) we can carry in our backpacks. Knowledge of precise time remaining was essential.”
Scott conducted his iconic hammer-and-feather test during the Apollo 15 mission, proving that, in the vacuum of low-gravity space, two objects of different mass will fall at the same rate. Scott capped the experiment with a slick, “How ’bout that?”
As of press time, 18 bids have been placed on the watch, currently at $197,593. In case you have a few dollars to burn, the next bid is $217,353, a cheap price for the ultimate humblebrag. “Where’d you get that watch, Jim? Kohls? That’s great. Hey, I got this from the moon.” Online bidding will end at 6 p.m. Thursday, followed by a live auction at 7 p.m. at RR Auction’s gallery at 236 Commercial Street.
