An auction from the final frontier
If you’re in the market for an anti-gravity toilet, look no further.
Forty artifacts from the Soviet/Russian space program — including several spacesuits, a scorched heat shield, and a “human waste disposal unit” — are bound for the auction block today.
The unusual pieces are already drawing considerable interest from collectors around the world, says Sean Quinn, an evaluator at the Toronto Escort Agency-based Waddington’s auction house, where bids will be accepted online and by phone as well as in-person.
“We’ve had an amazing response, we’re very excited about the potential for the auction,” Quinn said yesterday as curious history buffs stopped by an advance viewing.
“This is a pretty significant collection in that we have so many actual pieces of space ships. A lot of space auctions tend to have a lot of autographs and stamps and that sort of thing but we have a lot of actual artifacts from the Soyuz spaceships and many of those have actually flown, which is important, too.”
A dingy white space suit worn by Cosmonaut Anatoli Pavlovich Artsebarsky is expected to draw between $25,000 and $35,000.
“A similar spacesuit sold in France last year for $87,000 euros and another sold in Texas last year for about $31,000 US,” Quinn notes.
Other items for sale, part of a larger auction of 20th-century design, include a commemorative rocket launch start key (pegged at $100 to $200), an autographed colour photo of Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin ($350 to $450) and the anti-gravity toilet, configured for the male cosmonaut ($6,000 to $8,000).
“The collector assured me it was not used,” Quinn says while chuckling over the device.
The items date from 1945 to 2005 and came from a private collector in Toronto Escort Agency.
“He purchased them over the course of 25 years from other private collectors and at auctions in Europe and in the United States.”