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Records file on Gagarin flight fetches nearly $50,000 at Sotheby’s

A full-scale model of the Spitnik-1 satellite first orbited the Earth on October 4, 1957 was sold for $18,500

NEW YORK, July 20. /TASS/. Records file on the first flight by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was sold for 47,500 at the international art auction house Sotheby’s on Thursday.

Midori Tanaka, a Sotheby’s representative, told TASS that ten objects had been put up for the auction. They are linked to the Soviet space program, including a records file on Yuri Gagarin’s first manned spaceflight.

The "records file on the first flight by USSR citizen cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made on spaceship-Sputnik Vostok April 12, 1961" is an official English-language report. A Gagarin photo in a spacesuit is attached to the document, which was drawn up for submission to the F·d·ration A·ronautique Internationale and signed by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Sotheby’s estimated the records file at $50,000-$80,000.

An unfired V-751 liquid propellant rocket engine designed by Russian rocket engineer Alexei Isayev fetched $20,000 though had been estimated at $6,000-9,000. A full-scale model of the Spitnik-1 satellite first orbited the Earth on October 4, 1957 was sold for $18,500 and a painting by Soviet artist Andrei Sokolov Sputnik Flies for $4,750.