On July 6, 2019, Sotheby's announced that they would have available for sale, on July 20, three 2" video tape reels out of a total of 1,150 reels bought at a government surplus auction in 1976, at a price of $218 US dollars. The three reels were said to be first-generation recordings of the Apollo 11 EVA video, but were not the missing 1" telemetry data tapes. The tapes had been purchased in 1976 at a General Services Administration auction, by Gary George, then an engineering student at Lamar University. George had learned about these "government surplus" auctions while an intern at the Johnson Space Center. On July 20, 2019, the fiftieth anniversary of the first moonwalk, the three tapes were sold to an undisclosed buyer for 1.82 million USD, according to Sotheby's. Although Sotheby's described these tapes as "the best surviving NASA videotape recordings of the historic Apollo 11 Moon Landing" and "the earliest, sharpest and most accurate surviving video images of man's first steps on the moon", a statement from NASA said these tapes "contain no material that hasn't been preserved at NASA".