Judge Rules Woman Legal Owner of Rare Apollo 11 Moon Rock Bag, Bought At Auction For $995
By Space Coast Daily // December 27, 2016
auctioned off by the U.S. Marshals Service
An Illinois woman is now the legal owner of a rare moon rock sample bag from Apollo 11 that was accidentally auctioned off by the U.S. Marshals Service in Texas in February of 2015.
In a lawsuit settled on in mid-December, the government was attempting to reverse the auction transaction and regain sole possession of the historic item, but lost in the judge’s ultimate ruling.
Judge J. Thomas Marten of the U.S. District Court for Kansas determined that Nancy Carlson of Inverness, Ill., had obtained the title to the collection sack as “a good faith purchaser, in a sale conducted according to law.”
Carlson bought the lunar bag for $995 at a Texas auction run by the U.S. Marshals Service and had been part of a lot seized from the home of Max Ary, a convicted thief and former curator of the Cosmosphere Space Museum in Hutchinson, Kansas.
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