As the space shuttle Atlantis set out on its final journey, space memorabilia collectors flooded the website of Goldberg’s Auctions in Los Angeles to make a bid at a piece of NASA history where the shuttle relics will be up for grabs. The space shuttle relics surged both in price and popularity as NASA’s 30-year-old space shuttle program ends with the landing of Atlantis, scheduled for Thursday at Kennedy Space Center.
Around 1,500 bidders, some from as far away as Singapore and Hong Kong, participated in the auction on the website, over seven phone lines and in the auction house itself, which makes it more than any previous space auction. In the last five years, one of 10,000 American flags flown on the first space shuttle flight sold for about $500, and now such a flag would fetch over $1,000 now thanks to the nostalgia and publicity associated with the last lap of the shuttle program ends, says collector Robert Pearlman, founder of CollectSPACE.com. Any items that have flown in space always fetch a premium be it the flags, rocks or even space dust. So in case you fancy being part of the space legacy, this could well be your choice.