1920s Luxor aviator goggles with a cracked left lens, worn by Amelia Earhart during her first plane crash in July 1921 in her Airster while learning to fly with instructor Neta Snook, have fetched $17,775 at an auction in Oakland, California.
The goggles previously were owned by Barbara Englehardt, a Contra Costa County resident who got them from a friend about 20 years ago. Englehardt said her friend bought the goggles at an antique gun show although she did not know for how much. Earhart gave the goggles to her flying instructor, Neta Snook Southern, who told Englehardt that she gave them to a friend, according to Englehardt.
In addition to the goggles, 24 photographs were auctioned by Clars Auction Gallery, for a total of $13,509.The photographs include shots of Earhart at a barbershop and making other preparations for the round-the-world flight, as well as her plane taking off on March 17, 1937. That was one of two attempts Earhart made that year to circumnavigate the globe. Her plane would disappear in the Pacific during the second attempt a few months later. She was declared dead in 1939.
Amelia Earhart
