The $2 Bill in Space: Gene Cernan's Note and the $91,519 Record

Gene Cernan's Lucky Two

Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon, carried a Series 1953 $2 United States Note, serial number A10241591A, that had been his father's good-luck charm. His father died in January 1967. Cernan flew the bill on Gemini 9A in 1966, on Apollo 10 in 1969, when it orbited the Moon aboard the lunar module Snoopy, and on Apollo 17 in December 1972, when it went to the lunar surface with him. It is, in RR Auction's words, "the only known piece of currency flown on multiple lunar space flights."

On April 23, 2026 the note sold at RR Auction for $91,519, which the house called "the most valuable $2 bill ever sold at Auction in the US." For scale, the record for a $2 sold purely as currency is $35,250, the 1976 San Francisco star note with serial number 1. Cernan's note beat it by a factor of two and a half without being rare, uncirculated, or an error. It was just the one that went to the Moon.

Sources: RR Auction, "A Three-Time Flown Treasure of the Space Age: Gene Cernan's Legendary $2 Bill" · Numismatic News, RR Auction April 2026 space auction · currency record on Errors and Auction Records

Why Astronauts Carried Twos

A $2 bill is flat, light, personal, and easy to sign, which made it a favorite flight souvenir in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. The collector Richard Jurek spent more than 25 years assembling what Numismatic News called the world's largest collection of space-flown currency, about 100 lots offered by RR Auction in April 2026. The $2 bills in it flew on:

Mercury-Atlas 9, "Faith 7," with Gordon Cooper, 1963

Gemini V, with Pete Conrad and Gordon Cooper, two bills cut in half

Apollo 10, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17

STS-135, the final Space Shuttle mission, 2011

Heritage Auctions has separately offered a "Gemini 3 (Molly Brown) Flown Crew-Signed Two-Dollar Bill on Original Signed Certificate," from Gus Grissom and John Young's 1965 flight. An online collection calling itself the Jefferson Space Museum claims the world's largest holding of space-flown $2 bills and appeared in the 2015 documentary about the note.