An Oregon man has sold what is believed to be one of the first prototypes of a Nike shoe to one of the world's biggest shoe collectors.

Jeff Wasson, who says he was given the shoe in 2010 by Tom Bowerman, one of the sons of Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman, sold it for $1,500 to Jordan Geller, who owns hundreds of original Nike shoes housed in his ShoeZeum in California.

An original Nike prototype unearthed in the company co-founder's yard was sold to a collector who likened it to "a once-in-a-lifetime find." Jordan Geller

The shoe, Geller said, is a prototype of the Moon Shoe, the first Nike shoe made under the company's previous name, Blue Ribbon Sports. Nike handed out pairs of the shoes, named for their waffle-patterned soles that looked like the marks made by the boots of astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin when they roamed the surface of the moon three years before, at the 1972 U.S. Olympic trials in Eugene, Ore.

The shoe features a "fat belly" swoosh, which is the original look of the logo designed by Portland State graphics design student Carolyn Davidson in 1971 for a fee of $35.

"This is the first real prototype that I've ever seen come to market," Geller said. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime find for someone like me."

Wasson, who works for an Oregon utilities company, frequently visited the house of Phil Knight's business partner Bill Bowerman, who died in 1999, for meter readings. In 2010, he was asked by Tom Bowerman to help take down some trees around the property. It was on that day that Tom found in one of his father's buried trash piles one of the original waffle irons his father used to devise Nike's first soles.