Saucy Playboy pictures taken to the Moon have sold for $400,000 at auction.
They were sold alongside a space hammer that went for $812,500 in the sale of Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean‘s mission-used items.
The American became the fourth person to walk on the Moon in 1969 as part of the second US mission to the lunar surface.
His cuff-mounted checklist featured detailed instructions on mission tasks, as well as hidden Playboy magazine images and hand-drawn cartoons secretly inserted by fellow astronauts before launch.
The highest-selling item in Dallas-based Heritage Auctions’ $3.1M sale was Bean’s surface-used geological hammer.
The tool became part of Apollo history on November 19, 1969, when Bean famously used it to free a fuel cask during deployment of an experiments package on the lunar surface.
Bean later declared, “Don’t ever come to the Moon without a hammer.”
Brad Palmer, director of space exploration at Heritage Auctions, said: “The incredible result for this hammer is a clear reflection of the interest in items from lunar missions, but the demand for items that actually made it to the surface of the Moon is exponentially greater.”
