Currently, RR Auction is hosting its Space Exploration and Aviation auction. Ending on April 20th, 2023, the auction includes several watches that belonged to astronauts and cosmonauts. Among them are three 18K gold Speedmaster Professional “Tribute to Astronauts” watches. This is your chance to own a lovely horological piece of space-exploration history, assuming your pockets […]

Visit Your Chance To Own An Astronaut’s Omega Speedmaster to read the full article.

 

Interesting, thanks!
Kind regards,

 

Of this 2023 RR auction lot Alan Bean was the only astronaut who wore his Gold "Apollo 11 tribute" Speedmaster during NASA Skylab training.
Other astronauts who have worn theirs during training included Pete Conrad, Eugene Cernan and Thomas Stafford.
Here's Alan Bean wearing his Gold n° 26 during Skylab training
(Photo: NASA) #MoonwatchUniverse #Speedytuesday
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Don't forget our own discussion topic:
https://omegaforums.net/threads/wow...stronaut-gold-speedmasters-at-auction.157473/

 

These auctions are fun to watch, if not also participate in. There's no sniping. You need to be a bidder before a deadline on the final day. After the deadline, the clock starts with the highest bid. If no other bids after 30 minutes, you win. If someone else bids, the 30 min clock resets. Each new bid is 10% higher, so it soon gets pricey. Sometimes people let the 30 minutes run and bid in the last couple of minutes. It can drag on, but is never dull.

 

330k plus 25% for Gus's watch..


$21,260 plus 25 % for this flight director's 1675 was a really good deal imho:


Edit: I did really well. Conrad's autograph on the moon has been hard to find.

 

Ron Evans and Alan Bean (add 25% commission to price):

 

I'm genuinely interested - is there much of a premium attached to a kind of 'space flight adjacent' watch like this?

I totally understand the value of flown watches, and items like the tribute gold speedmasters. But is there a tangible appeal to any watches related to NASA, even fairly tangentially?

At the moment someone in Australia is selling an speedmaster from an astronaut's (I think it was Gene Cernan) 'personal collection'. Seems to have nothing to do with his NASA career and was probably bought a few decades after the last moon flight. I've been struggling to understand the appeal / large premium for that and would welcome some insight!

 

Yes and no

The 1675 sold a few months ago for under 20k. It was listed on a space themed web site and I contacted the owner with an offer, after which he said it had recently sold. It reappeared here in the rrauction with only a small markup. It didn't go as high as I expected, which means my opinion may not count for much.

It was an early 1675 with box and papers, unpolished and nice lume. Even without provenance it was worth 20k. The flight director wore this during multiple launches. He was the CSM director for Apollo XI, if memory serves. This should have been a higher price with more bidding.

In general, anything flown is desired, whether watches, patches or flags. Some inexpensive quartz watches that were flown have sold in the low thousands. But it does depend on the watch, with speedys being the hottest.

Look at Gordon's Day-Date (which I bid on before it went crazy.) It’s a what, 14k watch?



That's plus 25%.

It also depends on which astronaut and if they were Apollo, or if they were moonwalkers or not.

It also depends on whether the person signed a lot of authographs or not. Buzz Aldrin signed a lot so is not worth much. Alders hated to sign autographs so he's more valuable. Some of that probably translates to watches.

Cernan recently sold a couple watches, one of which was a Constellation that he wore alot. It sold for something like 3800 plus commission. I almost bid but I just didn't like the watch. But I thought it was a good deal as it wasn't much of a premium.

Watches have slowed in sales, but space items seem to be holding. Space plus watches? The gold Speedmasters were a lot of money but cheaper than the crazy 1.5 million that Eric Wind is asking for Carpenter's watch. Does this mean space watches are cooling? The MIr Speedmaster sold for about 125k with commission, which is a decent amount. But it was space flown and a limited speedy.

I wouldn't mind seeing the Australian Cernan watch if you care to share the link.

With any auction, it depends on who is bidding, and sometimes on whether an item slips by other more known items. The same item in two different auctions could bring vastly different results. I wonder if three gold astronaut Speedmasters was too much for one auction. They might have done better alone. But the Gus watch seemed to bring up the Evans watch as the bids came in late for Evans ( and Bean). They were under 200k when Gus was atv330k. Maybe someone thought it was a good relative value.

You can read that I am hesitating with a yes or no. I think in general yes, but how much is harder to predict. Part of me is thinking that if you don’t understand the prenium for an Astronaut watch, then respectfully you might not be the right buyer. As with anything, what is popular today might not be tomorrow. The future may not care about Apollo. But when items get very expensive, they seem to become disassociated from the historical reasons that made them valuable and they become an empty commodity. The gold Speedmasters will probably keep their value. Will a cheap quartz watch that was flown is space hold its value? Maybe not. Will Cernan's constellation increase in value? Don't know. But I'd love to own a speedmaster owned by an Astronaut and I suspect many others would also.

Sorry for the stream of conscious writing. Hope it helps. Curious about your thoughts.

 

Thanks a lot for your response to this, you make good points that help me understand the interests and drives involved.

I appreciate your point about needing to be the right buyer, with the right subjective passions. I find the speedmaster + astronaut link very appealing, but my interests in provenance don't go much further than that (e.g. I probably wouldn't pay much of a premium for a watch worn by a celebrity).

Here's the link to Gene's watch in Aus, they're definitely asking a premium in this case

https://thewatchdealers.com.au/prod...50th-anniversary-gene-cernans-personal-watch/

 

Jumping Jimmy!

No thank you. I'm with you.