On August 25 we were sad to learn of the death of Neil Armstrong, the first man to ever set foot on the moon, and a name that will forever live on in the history books.
Neil Armstrong was a very intelligent man, and carried out the roles of aerospace engineer and pilot before becoming an astronaut. But his intelligence didn?t just extend to his career, he also knew enough about money to make sure his family and friends were taken care of whatever happened to him in his very dangerous job.
As you?d expect, Neil Armstrong and his fellow astronauts couldn?t get life insurance for their trip to the moon. No insurance company would ever take that gamble when these guys were attempting something that had never been done before. Or at least, any that did wanted a ridiculous amount of money up front.
But that didn?t stop the crew of Apollo 11 taking out a different form of life insurance. No insurance company was involved, however, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins instead sat there signing autographs during quarantine in the month before launch.
In that time hundreds of autographs were signed by the three. Those autographs were all done on envelopes, which were then handed to a friend who delivered them to the post office for postmarking on specific, important days.
The end result was a load of very valuable envelopes, all carrying the autographs of the astronauts and postmarks on dates such as July 20, 1969. If Apollo 11 had never made it back those envelopes could have been sold for huge sums of money and the astronauts? families catered for financially. As it turns out, the three returned with the value in those envelopes assured by their historic mission.
If you?re wondering how much such an envelope would fetch, apparently they were selling at auction for $30,000 some 20 years ago. That?s sure to have increased significantly if any were to turn up at auction today.
via NPR
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