Playboy Playmate Apollo 12 Moon Mission Photo Up for Auction

The photo of DeDe Lind, Miss August 1967, was stashed on the Apollo 12 command module Yankee Clipper and can now be bought at RR Auction. According to reports, the photo was affixed to a cardboard cue card and secretly smuggled on the spacecraft. The shot contains a signed inscription from Lind that refers to Richard ("Dick") F. Gordon, the Intrepid command module pilot.

The auction site description said, “Normal wear as one would expect from an object that made the approximately 475,000 mile round-trip journey to the moon and back, this flown iconic piece of 1960s pop culture still retains its velcro strips, which were used to affix it inside the spacecraft.”

The piece comes with a statement signed in black felt tip on the reverse by Gordon that says, “Flown on Apollo XII. Richard Gordon, CMP,” and reads in part: “This is to certify that the accompanying 4.5” x 6.25” cue card …did, indeed, accompany me on my trip to the moon in the Command Module Yankee Clipper aboard the historic Apollo 12 lunar landing mission. This cue card, which flew with me to the moon, has been in my sole possession and part of my personal space collection since my return from the moon in 1969 aboard America’s second lunar landing mission, and it remains one of the all-time greatest Apollo era astronaut ‘gotcha’s.’”

Called the “flight of the Playboy bunnies,” the stash holds a place in astronaut lore as an iconic prank.

According to RR Auction, Gordon’s fellow Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean explored the lunar surface with other, smaller black-and-white photocopies of Playboy images pasted on the cuffs of their spacesuits.

The flown artifact remains one of only two known original Playboy bunny color photos to have made it to the moon and back.