A NASA intern Gary George paid $217 for 1,150 NASA tapes; 43 years later, 3 Apollo 11 recordings showing Neil Armstrong sold for $1.82 million

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.

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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.

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The recording also contains Armstrong's famous words: “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Sotheby's described the tapes as the earliest, sharpest and most accurate surviving video images of the first steps on the moon. Unlike later versions broadcast to television audiences, these recordings were made directly from the NASA feed seen at Mission Control.

Why were the original Apollo 11 tapes so rare?

The incredible value of George's discovery was partly caused by something that happened decades earlier. NASA had recorded the moonwalk on videotape, but the original recordings were not treated as priceless historical artifacts at the time. Magnetic videotape was expensive, and recordings could be erased and reused.

NASA later searched for its original Apollo 11 recordings but could not locate them. The space agency eventually concluded that the original slow-scan recordings had likely been erased and reused, while other recordings had either been lost or damaged. That made George's three reels extraordinarily important.

The remarkable part of the story is that George didn't immediately realize what he had. He simply kept the three reels for around 43 years.

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The tapes eventually became a $1.82 million discovery

For decades, they moved with him while he travelled around the country. He didn't even play them until years later because the equipment required to read the old format was difficult to find. Then, in 2008, George learned that NASA was looking for its missing Apollo 11 recordings.

“I was sitting at the table drinking a beer and I said, ‘Well damn, I have those,’” George recalled. He eventually found a specialist studio with equipment capable of playing the vintage reels. When they were finally viewed, the recordings were found to be in remarkably good condition.

Sotheby's offered the three reels at its July 2019 Space Exploration auction in New York, exactly 50 years after the Apollo 11 moon landing. The auction house had estimated that the tapes could fetch between $1 million and $2 million and they ultimately sold for $1.82 million.