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See a rare dinosaur or a chunk of Mars during Sotheby’s 'Geek Week'
By
Ryan Kailath
Published Jul 7, 2025
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Matthew Sherman / Courtesy of Sotheby's
By
Ryan Kailath
Published Jul 7, 2025
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New Yorkers may not think of Sotheby’s, the tony auction house on the Upper East Side, as a place to casually pop in to, let alone a place to see dinosaurs or Martian meteorites.
But during “Geek Week,” that’s exactly what’s on free public view. From July 8 to 15, Sotheby’s is displaying some remarkable objects of natural history, science and space exploration before they hit the auction block.
This year’s standout is a six-foot-tall, 10-foot-long juvenile Ceratosaurus, one of only four known specimens of this extremely rare Jurassic dinosaur.
The roughly 150 million-year-old fossil, which has been reconstructed with a few ceramic elements to replace missing pieces, was discovered in Wyoming in 1996, according to Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s vice chairman of science and natural history.
It’s expected to sell for between 4 and 6 million dollars.
The sale includes more than 100 ancient items, sourced from various collectors, including dinosaur skulls and claws, chunks of meteorites, a 4,000-year-old stone axe and astonishing, iridescent slices of mineral and crystal, all on view.
Another showstopper is a 54-pound Martian meteorite – the largest known piece of Mars on Earth. This chunk of the Red Planet is believed to have been chipped off by one of only 16 known asteroid strikes powerful enough to launch debris into space, before landing in the Sahara desert.
“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,” Hatton said. “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.”
Hatton said scientists were able to confirm the meteorite’s extraterrestrial origin by extracting gas trapped in bubbles inside the rock and comparing it to Martian atmospheric data transmitted from NASA’s Viking lander in 1976.
The sale also includes objects that went to space with astronaut Buzz Aldrin, from his collection.
Another highlight includes what Hatton describes as the finest operational Apple-1 computer in existence: one of 50 machines hand-built by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in 1976.
The Apple founders had built a few prototypes and were shopping them around town, Hatton said, when a local shopkeeper happened to see their presentation at the Home Brew Computer Club, an early computer hobbyist group in Menlo Park, California. He asked for 50, which sent the techies scrambling for parts to fulfill a bigger order than they’d anticipated.
The sale also includes one of Jobs’ earliest business cards, expected to sell for $5,000 to 8,000.
For those who associate Sotheby’s with high-stakes blue-chip art sales and exclusivity, Geek Week is a reminder that the auction house doubles as a pop-up museum.
Hatton said she’s the only science specialist on staff.
“I go from scientific books and manuscripts to tech, dinosaurs, minerals, meteorites, space exploration,” Hatton said. “I do hip-hop sales sometimes too. It all connects together somehow, in my mind.”
Sotheby’s Geek Week is at 1334 York Ave. from July 8 through 15, open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day except Sunday, when it opens at 1 p.m. No RSVP is required.
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