Sotheby’s Geek Week is a dream for collectors with stars in their eyes, writes Aimee Dawson, as interest in out-of-this-world artifacts booms
The First American Spacewalk. Color photograph signed and inscribed by Jim McDivitt. Photograph: Courtesy of Sotheby’s
Space has rarely felt closer. Millions watched in awe in April 2026 as NASA completed its nine-day Artemis II mission to circle the moon, the only crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. Meanwhile, SpaceX—Elon Musk’s aerospace manufacture and transportation company, founded with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets—went public this June to much fanfare, allowing anyone to buy into the 21st-century space race.
But stocks and shares are not the only way to own a piece of space history—this summer sees the return on July 15 of Sotheby’s flagship Space Exploration auction.
This year’s sale includes 134 lots, from space-related photographs, documents and books to astronaut-owned watches and fragments of spacecraft. It’s part of both the annual Geek Week at Sotheby’s New York—which also features auctions for Natural History and the History of Science and Technology—and The Summer Season New York for which Sotheby’s International Realty is the presenting partner.
Lunar chart signed and inscribed by a moonwalker from every Apollo moon landing. Photograph: Courtesy of Sotheby’s
Adam Stackhouse, vice president and senior specialist in science and space exploration at Sotheby’s, reports that interest has grown steadily in the category, especially since the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 2019. Items that have flown on Apollo missions—especially that historic 1969 voyage—garner the most collector interest, says Stackhouse, but early Soviet space program artifacts and lots from NASA’s earlier Mercury and Gemini missions are also sought after.
A Vostok 3KA-2 spacecraft—which was used in a 1961 Soviet test flight, directly before Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly into space—sold at Sotheby’s in 2011 for US$2,882,500. In 2022, a jacket worn by Buzz Aldrin during his mission to the moon and back sold for US$2,772,500.
Buzz Aldrin’s inflight coverall jacket, worn on his mission to the Moon and back during Apollo 11. Courtesy of Sotheby’s
The 2026 Space sale includes another Aldrin treasure with an amazing story: a plastic felt-tipped pen and broken circuit breaker switch. The pen was used by Aldrin to fix the broken switch while trying to ascend from the lunar surface. Without his ingenuity, the astronauts would have been stranded and the entire space program would have failed. The lot is estimated to sell for US$800,000 to $1.2m.
Other items include a coverall jacket and trousers worn by Apollo 14 command module pilot Stuart Roosa during most of the flight: the only complete Apollo mission-flown set to have appeared at auction, estimated at US$200,000 to $300,000.
The broken circuit breaker switch that nearly ended Apollo 11 and the pen that saved the crew and the mission. Courtesy of Sotheby’s
Every lot is “evocative,” says Stackhouse. “So much can be conveyed in a single object. Collectors are drawn to these items because they can bring the mission to life.”
The Space Exploration category is incredibly varied, both in terms of price point and object type—from small items like Aldrin’s pen to large, almost sculptural pieces of spacecraft like the Vostok 3KA-2. Some lots are more like artworks, such as a framed mosaic of photographs captured by the Lunar Orbiter V robotic spacecraft that NASA sent to orbit the moon in 1967, which sold in 2025.
Mosaic, Aristarchus, August 1967. Photograph: Courtesy of Sotheby’s
As such, these sales attract a wide demographic. “This is an area where many of the collectors are relatively young and they seem to realize that space isn’t only about the celebration of the past achievements but also about the heralding of future goals,” Stackhouse says.
July’s sale is also the first in the Space category to be held at Sotheby’s new global headquarters, the iconic Breuer building in Manhattan, which originally opened in 1966, three years before the moon landing. With its clean lines, this concrete brutalist space lends itself perfectly to visualizing the auction lots in the modern home. Emerging from the corner of Madison Avenue and 75th Street, it’s almost like a spacecraft itself.
Sotheby’s International Realty is the Presenting Partner for The Summer Season New York at Sotheby’s.
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