Im not sure if this is kosher here and I’m in no way associated with this seller but there is a pretty reputable guy that is selling pieces of the Apollo 11 command module gold foil heat shield for $39.95 on EBay. He is Paul Hartunian who has been dealing in historical artifacts since 1968 and operates historybytheinch.com. It is widely known that the fragments left from the heat shield were removed (see Apollo 11 at the smithsonian) and distributed to dozens of people who worked on the Apollo project. This artifact never landed on the moon because it was part of the orbiting command module and is very very tiny at 1/4 inch at its largest. People pay $70 for a 1mm by 1mm piece in a fancy display and this is probably 20 times that size for less. Thought it would be cool to pair with my soon to purchase moon watch.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Apollo-11-...m=292759108516&_trksid=p2349624.c100935.m2460Purchases made through these links may earn this site a commission from the eBay Partner Network

 

Go big or go home

 

I guess if you can afford 35k on the watch you can afford something for 39.95 on the bay.

 

Got to be a fake

 

I researched the provenance and it seems like it’s probably legit. Bill Whipkey was head of NASA machine shop during the Apollo era and was tasked with making Apollo displays that were sent to museums and on tours. This fact is easily researchable. About 6 separate lots of around 10-15 inch squared of leftover A-11 Kapton was sold from his estate by Goldberg Auctions on 12-08-18. https://www.goldbergcoins.com/view-auctions/catalog/id/65/lot/135351/
There is another seller at minimuseum.com selling even smaller fragments from Bill Whipkey’s scraps for more expensive but in a nice display.

At the size this seller is selling these pieces, a ten inch squares segment of the Kapton would produce about 500 products for sale at $40 each grosses $20,000. The larger segments sold for $1000-$2000. There’s a nice margin in there for the seller. The seller also has been in the business since the 1960s and his Ebay store has thousands of reviews and 100% rating.

 

This is BS. The command module didn’t have a gold foil “heat shield” — the gold foil was for a radiation shield on the lander. Looking closer, this is just remnants of the material that may have been used for Apollo-era models sent to museums.

My best is it was nowhere near the lander or command module, and it never went into space.

 

Legit or not I wouldn't buy that anyway..

 

Thanks for the link

 

Sorry, but everything you just said is demonstrably wrong. Above is a photo of the command module immediately upon landing in the Pacific on July 24th, 1969. Then here is a photo of the Kapton less Command module at the Smithsonian. I also can trace a clear link between someone who was known to have received large quantities of the material and the auction where the material was recently procured. Nothing is a guarantee if it wasn’t procured by yourself but dont call out BS on something that you know so little about and couldn’t bother spending 5 minutes researching.

 

Furthermore, the link to the auction of the material that was cut to construct the samples that are for sale, shows the larger auctioned pieces. Upon examination of the pieces one can see what appears to be fire or heat related damage. Unflown material would not have heat related damage unless this material had been part of some extremely elaborate forgery, which in theory is possible. I wanted to attach a photo of an example of the displays that Bill Whipkey constructed after the Apollo 11 landings. Again, without witnessing the actual removal of the article no one could be 100% sure of any article’s origin. Since I have thouroughly researched this, I am very confident that this highly likely to be authentic.