NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell. (Credit: NASA)
When RR Auction sold Dave Scott’s Bulova for $1.6 million in 2015, the Boston-based auction house wrote the astronaut's personal watch had been worn on the moon. After all, a letter by Scott himself certified of such a fact.
But in one of the most important auctions of a Rolex GMT-Master that is closing next week, on Oct. 24, RR Auction is stopping short of saying so. The Edgar Mitchell Rolex GMT-Master 1675 listing indicates the watch was "worn on the Apollo 14 mission" and that Mitchell "wore this GMT-Master to the moon along with his Omega." The listing doesn't say whether the watch was actually worn on the moon.
I asked the consigner of the watch, RR Auction, why the listing didn’t say the Rolex was worn on the moon when its owner did step on the moon during Apollo 14 mission. RR Auction executive vice-president Bobby Livingston said they believe the watch was left in the astronaut kit in the lunar module and it was not worn during Mitchell’s EVA (extra-vehicular activity).
“Would he wear a watch under his suit? What practical purpose would it have served?” Livingston told me. “We have to go by with what he told us in his letter.” Neither the letter nor the engraving on the watch caseback says the watch was worn on the moon. “If he had made the claim it went to the moon, OK,” Livingston said. “But he didn’t. And he knew—he would have known enough to point that out, I think," Livingston finally said.