A special edition of the Tintin comic book 'Explorers on the Moon' (On a marché sur la lune in French), signed by six Apollo astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin, is currently being auctioned online by a Belgium-based seller.
Bidding for the volume, which also includes an autograph from Tintin author Hergé himself, is currently at €29,000.
The other astronauts whose autographs feature inside the volume are Fred Haise (a member of the Apollo 13 crew), Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14), Al Worden (Apollo 15), Charlie Duke (Apollo 16), and Gene Cernan (Apollo 17).
"First moon-walkers after Tintin", says the message written by Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon after Neil Armstrong, above his autograph on the title page.
"Like Tintin before me, we have had problems during our flight to the moon but we came back safe" reads Edgar Mitchell's inscription on the opposite page, while Charlie Duke points out below that he is "the youngest man after Tintin to explore the moon".
"When orbiting the moon, I took the farthest-out space walk, including Tintin's," reads the message left by Al Worden. "I am not sure Tintin was the first moonwalker, but I am sure to be the latest one", Gene Cernan wrote next to his autograph.
The page also features a message handwritten by Hergé, around which the astronauts put their own inscriptions.
The autographs were obtained during the seller's trips to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida between 2009 and 2015. The auction also includes VIP bracelets, original documents from the visits, and photographs of the astronauts signing the volume as proof of authenticity.
First published as a full-length comic in 1954, the seventeenth volume of the Tintin series is the second of a two-part story about the young Belgian reporter's expedition to the moon.
The comic depicts Tintin walking on the surface of the moon, alongside the characters Snowy, Captain Haddock, and Professor Calculus, fifteen years before the real-life Apollo 11 mission. The specific edition which has been put on auction is in the original French and was published in 1962.
The auction, which began two weeks ago, has seen bids from Belgium, France, and Luxembourg so far. The volume is estimated to be worth up to €36,000, and is described as being in "very good condition". Bids can be placed until Sunday at 9pm on the online auction platform Catawiki.
"Tintin walked on the moon long before mankind, and Hergé inspired generations of explorers", Catawiki's Belgian comic book expert Marc Toussaint told Belga regarding the high-profile auction. "Not only do the autographs from real astronauts make this album a treasure for collectors, but they also connect imagination and reality".
Limited-edition Tintin volumes and original drawings by Hergé have fetched high prices in recent years. A black-and-white original drawing for the cover for 'Tintin in America' was sold at a Paris auction in 2023 for €2.13m, a figure surpassed by the €3.175m paid for an original 'Blue Lotus' cover a few years previously.
