Apollo 11 Insurance Cover

Suppose it’s 1969 and you’re getting ready for a visit to the moon as an Apollo astronaut. You may not make it back alive — that’s no secret to anybody — but you still want to provide for your family. Anybody else would just take out a life insurance policy, but astronauts didn’t have that option. No agent in the world would accept such a risky policy.

NASA solved the problem simply and cleverly. Astronauts would sign a set of postcards just before each launch. Such memorabilia would be inherently valuable just for representing a bit of history. If the astronauts didn’t survive, though, those limited, suddenly irreplaceable cards would be worth a fortune. Astronauts’ families could make their “insurance” income by simply selling their stock of cards.

A lot of the details are a bit of a mystery (e.g., precisely how many of each card exist), but they’re still traded today. Various auction sites, including eBay, currently offer cards for around $10,000.

(via UKinsurancenet)