— A dried out felt-tip marker and a snapped off piece of molded black plastic sold for $857,600 at a Sotheby's auction on Wednesday (July 15).

What otherwise might be worthless bits of trash commanded the highest bids of the sale due to where the two items were one day and 57 years ago — lifting off aboard NASA's Apollo 11 spacecraft on humanity's first mission to land astronauts on the moon. More than flown odds and ends, one was the problem that almost stranded Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface and the other was the simple solution to saving the mission.

"Houston, Tranquility. Do you have a way of showing the configuration of the engine arm circuit breaker?" radioed Aldrin to Mission Control after realizing he or Armstrong had inadvertently broken off the top of the circuit breaker switch that would enable their ascent engine to ignite, beginning their trip back to Earth. "The reason I'm asking is because the end of it appears to be broken off. I think we can push it back in again. I'm not sure we could pull it out if we pushed it in, though."

As engineers on the ground worked to devise a workaround, Aldrin came up with a straightforward idea, as he described decades later in the letter accompanying the artifacts' sale.

"While I could have stuck my finger in and reset the switch, there was electricity flowing through the breaker and I did not want to electrocute myself. I had a plastic felt tip pen in one of my suit pockets and it fit into the breaker opening, so I pushed the marker pen into the circuit breaker, it clicked on, and we rearmed the Engine Arm circuit," he wrote.

"Now we could leave the lunar surface," Aldrin said, "rendezvous with Mike Collins in the command module, and head for home. Disaster averted."

The tale of the pen and circuit breaker is well known, having been recounted by Aldrin in his books and talks, as well as for years having been included on the pamphlet packaged with every Fisher Space Pen sold until Aldrin pointed out that as an engineer, he would never insert a metal-tipped writing instrument into a live electrical socket. The pen he used and that was sold on Wednesday was a Duro-brand Rocket felt-tip marker.

Aldrin also loaned the pen and broken off circuit breaker switch to the Smithsonian for its "Destination Moon" traveling exhibit featuring the Apollo 11 command module "Columbia." The tour visited five U.S. cities over the course of two years, spanning the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing in 2019.

A law enacted in 2012 reconfirmed that Aldrin and his fellow Apollo-era astronauts legally had title to the spacecraft hardware and other crew equipment they kept as mementos from their missions. The pieces are theirs to own, sell, trade or donate as they desire.

This was at least the second time that the pen and switch had been offered for sale. In 2022, Sotheby's listed the same set as part of its "Buzz Aldrin: American Icon" sale. Despite eliciting bids up to $650,000, the lot failed to reach its reserve and was passed.

This time, the bids reached $670,000 and it was sold on behalf of the Buzz Aldrin Family Trust. The $857,600 total includes the buyer's premium assessed by Sotheby's. The winning bidder was not identified other than participating by phone.

While an impressive sale price, the pen and switch did not break into the top 10 list of the most paid at a public sale for space artifacts and memorabilia. That ranking begins at $1.625 million, the amount paid in 2015 for a Bulova watch worn outside on the surface of the moon during the 1971 Apollo 15 mission and tops out at the $2,882,500 spent for the former Soviet Union's Vostok 3KA-2 space capsule as auctioned by Sotheby's in 2011.

As a point of comparison, the second most paid for a space-flown artifact was the $2,772,500 commanded by Aldrin's Apollo 11 inflight jacket, which Sotheby's sold in 2022.

Wednesday's "Space Exploration" sale was part of Sotheby's annual Geek Week of science and technology-themed auctions. The sale offered 134 lots, including more than 40 items from Aldrin's collection. In total, it brought in $2,862,336.

A modern Moonshine gold Omega Speedmaster chronograph, one of 24 watches consigned by the Aldrin Family Trust, sold for $70,400. The same 2026 model is still for sale from Omega for $53,500 retail.

Another sale highlight and the only item other than the pen and switch set to sell for six figures was the pressure hatch from the Skylab III command module flown to and from the United States' first space station in 1974. It sold for $192,000.