NASA’s Spicy Secret: Playboy Pages That Went to the Moon in 1969 Sell for $400,000 at Auction

An unusual artifact from the era of space exploration has gone under the hammer for an impressive sum. Hidden pages from Playboy magazine, secretly taped into the mission checklists of the Apollo 12 astronauts by NASA’s backup crew in 1969, were sold at auction for $400,000, reports the New York Post.

The cheeky photos were contained inside the wrist instruction booklet of astronaut Alan Bean, the fourth human to set foot on the surface of the Moon.

A Billion-Dollar Prank

In November 1969, during humanity’s second lunar landing, Alan Bean and his colleague Pete Conrad flipped open the suit-mounted checklists strapped to their wrists while working on the lunar surface. To their astonishment, nestled among technical steps and schematics, they discovered cutouts of nude Playboy models and humorous drawings.

The prank had been secretly set up by their backup crew mates right before launch. The astronauts appreciated the humor, though they naturally tried to keep their cool during live radio transmissions back to Earth.

Other Rare Lots: A $812,500 Hammer

Heritage Auctions in Dallas sold Alan Bean’s collection of personal memorabilia for a total of $3.1 million.

The headlining and most expensive lot of the sale was the geological hammer Bean actually used on the Moon. The tool went under the hammer for an astronomical $812,500.

It was with this exact hammer on November 19, 1969, that Bean freed a fuel cask for scientific equipment, after which he uttered a famous line among astronauts: "Never go to the Moon without a hammer."

Brad Palmer, a representative for the auction house, noted that artifacts that didn’t just orbit in space, but were actively used on the lunar surface, hold immense value for collectors, with demand growing exponentially.