Auctions

Buzz Aldrin’s Apollo 11 Pen Draws $857,600 at Sotheby’s Geek Week Sale

The pen came with broken circuit breaker switch that nearly left the astronauts stranded on the moon

July 17, 2026

Close-up of a vintage steel mechanical pencil with a circular black eraser cap placed beside it on a white background. — Buzz Aldrin’s pen from Apollo 11. Photo: Courtesy Sotheby’s

It is mind-boggling to contemplate that a lump of metal nearly destroyed a moment as iconic as the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, but that is exactly what happened. Yesterday, that tiny broken circuit breaker switch and the pen that astronaut Buzz Aldrin jammed in the resulting hole to save the mission gaveled out for $857,600 in the Sotheby’s “Space Exploration” sale, part of its annual Geek Week, which is always a highlight among New York summer auctions.

Astronaut in a spacesuit walking on the moon near a spacecraft part on the lunar surface. — Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin Walking on the Surface of the Moon Near a Leg of the Lunar Module, 1969. Photo: Neil Armstrong, Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Aldrin described the dire nature of the situation that forced his quickly improvised repair: “We started looking at the circuit breaker panels and found that the broken switch was the Engine Arm switch. The worst circuit breaker switch to break, since without it we were not going to liftoff from the lunar surface and would be stuck on the Moon forever.” The pen and circuit switch were initially offered as part of a larger Aldrin auction in 2023, when they were in a crowd of notable Aldrin memorabilia and failed to meet their reserve, but this week they were the stars of the show.

Other effects associated with Aldrin generated broad interest. Several Omega watches beat their estimates by a healthy margin, as did images signed by the Apollo 11 astronauts. A signed American flag from the Gemini IV (owned by astronaut Jim McDivitt) went for $35,840 against an initial estimate of $3,000–5,000. The Geek Week sale overall was notable for a record-breaking price for dinosaur bones: $50.1 million for a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton affectionately known as “Gus.”