A Rolex watch that made a trip to the Moon is going up for auction – and the price will be out of this world.
RR Auction house is offering the GMT-Master ‘Pepsi’ model watch which belonged originally to the late astronaut Edgar Mitchell – the sixth man to walk on the Moon.
was worn on the moon to go up for auction. RR Auction / SWNS
Photos show the legendary timepiece on the Texas-born aviator who wore it while piloting the Lunar Module on the Apollo 14 mission in 1971.
“This incredibly rare watch, part of Mitchell’s personal collection, is one of only two Apollo-flown Rolex watches ever sold at auction,” RR Auction writes.
“A historic timepiece, it symbolizes the intersection of human achievement and precision craftsmanship.”
The GMT-Master was Mitchell’s personal preference. Apollo astronauts were issued Omega Speedmaster Pro watches – though some chose to wear Rolex chronometers.
Mitchell wore both the distributed Rolex and his own ‘Pepsi’ model.
The watch gets the name ‘Pepsi’ from its iconic blue and red bevel. The design was a collaboration between Rolex and Pan American specifically to allow pilots to track both local time and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
The watch is also engraved, reading: “Worn by Cdr. E. Mitchell on Apollo 14, 1971, To Karlin – My Daughter.”
According to RR Auction, the personal nature of the object will increase the timepiece’s value.
Bidding is currently at about $60,000 but is expected by the auction house to climb through the stratosphere and end up somewhere north of $400,000. The lot will close on October 24th.
Mitchell was instrumental in saving the crew of the catastrophic flight of Apollo 13 – after that mission’s module’s electrical system was compromised. The astronaut was credited with figuring out from the ground how the crew could operate their mostly disabled craft.
In 1970, Mitchell was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon for his life-saving actions.
On his return from the Moon in 1971, Mitchell would describe a spiritual revelation that changed the trajectory of his life.
“I realized that the molecules of my body and the molecules of the spacecraft had been manufactured in an ancient generation of stars,” Mitchell famously expounded.
He described the revelation as a “subjective visceral experience accompanied by ecstasy.” He would later write of the Moon, “The stillness seemed to convey that the landscape itself had been patiently awaiting our arrival for millions of years.”
Mitchell would go on to found the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a nonprofit scientific research center “and direct experience lab” that focuses on the intersection of “science and profound human experience.”
He was also a believer in UFOs — appearing in a tranche of John Podesta emails released by Wikileaks, in which he advocated that Podesta (a UFO believer himself) release federal government records on alien contact and “Zero Point Energy”.
Mitchell died on February 4th, 2016, in West Palm Beach, Fla., at the age of 85.
