“Forty years ago on Thursday, astronaut Neil Armstrong hurtled into space aboard Apollo 11 for his rendezvous with immortality on the dusty surface of the moon. But before he rode an elevator to the top of a 30-story-tall Saturn V rocket, Armstrong paused and wrote a check for $10.50 to a colleague. ‘Here’s a check for the loan,’ Armstrong said to Hal Collins, NASA chief of mission support. ‘But don’t cash it, because I will be coming back.’ Four decades later, Armstrong’s autograph would become the most valuable from any living human being, collectors say. That check, with a clearly legible name that flows gracefully across its bottom, is now for sale through an auction house here.” (07/14/09)