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Sotheby’s may be better known for Warhols and Picassos, but this week, the Upper East Side auction house is going full geek. Through July 15, the annual Geek Week exhibition returns, transforming the auction house into a free pop-up museum packed with dinosaurs, meteorites, space artifacts and one very famous computer.
The star of the show this year is a juvenile Ceratosaurus fossil, one of only four ever found and the only juvenile of its kind. Measuring over 10 feet long with a nearly complete skull, the 150-million-year-old dino was unearthed in Wyoming in 1996 and mounted by Fossilogic for sale. Bidding has already surpassed $3.5 million and Sotheby’s expects it to fetch up to $6 million.
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And if prehistoric predators aren’t your thing, how about a literal piece of Mars? On view is the largest known Martian meteorite on Earth—a 54-pound chunk launched into space by one of just 16 known asteroid impacts strong enough to fling debris off the Red Planet. It eventually crash-landed in the Sahara and is now estimated to sell for $2–4 million.
“That chunk had to be loose enough to break off, and then it had to get on the right trajectory to travel 140 million miles to Earth, and then it had to land in a spot where someone could find it,” said Sotheby’s science and natural history vice-president Cassandra Hatton told Gothamist. “And then we were lucky enough that someone came by who knew enough about meteorites to recognize that it wasn’t just a big rock.”
Other cosmic treasures include flown Apollo medallions, a lunar checklist carried by Buzz Aldrin and the only known copy of the 1949 BINAC computer manual, considered the first computer technical manual ever written.
On the tech side, the “Romkey” Apple-1 computer headlines the History of Science & Technology sale. Hand-built by Jobs and Wozniak in 1976, it’s considered the finest working Apple-1 in existence and carries an estimate of up to $600,000. (One of Jobs’ earliest business cards is also up for grabs.)
All of this nerdy goodness is free to view at Sotheby’s from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily (1 p.m. on Sundays). Who knew one of New York’s swankiest auction houses could double as the coolest science fair in town?