Olympic Winners' Medals Rising in Value

(ATR) New collectors are driving up prices for Olympic winners’ medals.

To an athlete, an Olympic gold medal is priceless. However, a Summer Games gold medal often could be purchased by collectors in the last few years for under $10,000.

Those days appear to be over. RR Auction, based in Amherst, New Hampshire, saw phenomenal prices in January during its first auction dedicated to Olympic memorabilia. For example, a 1984 gold medal brought $41,806.80 (including buyer’s premium), the 1960 Rome boxing gold medal won by Wilbert "Skeeter" McClure fetched $30,202.38 and a 1924 Chamonix gold medal went for $47,746.83.

Auctioneer Ingrid O’Neil, in her 77th mail bid auction ending March 5, had a 1984 gold medal bring $32,910.70.

"The whole Eastern Bloc didn’t attend (because of a boycott)," O’Neil tells Around the Rings, "so if collectors want a 1984 medal they have to buy it in the Western world. They are hard to find and I don’t think they come up very often."

More common medals, though, are also rising in price, thanks to people who have come over from other fields of collecting.

RR Auction, which specialized in fields such as autographs, literary, space and aviation, music and entertainment, was encouraged to enter the Olympic realm by its sale of the Raleigh DeGeer Amyx Collection in 2014, which featured many Olympic items.

In January, RR sold a 1956 Melbourne gold for $10,114.83, a 1976 Montreal silver for $10,598.70 and a 1980 Moscow silver for $8,758.75.

Winter Medals Scarce

Medals from the Winter Games, which have fewer events, have traditionally been more expensive -- and those from recent Olympic Games are particularly scarce.

O’Neil offered a gold Nagano medal for the first time and it sold for well over its estimate of $35,000. The beautiful medal, inset with Japanese lacquer and bearing a pictogram for luge, fetched $59,800.

"For the recent Games, they are extremely hard to find," O’Neil says. "The athletes all keep them."

While many collectors favor gold or silver medals, some decide to take a bronze when it is all they can find. A bronze in men’s weightlifting from the 2012 London Olympic Games brought the minimum $28,750, meaning there was only one bidder.

Fake Medals Proliferating

While the London medal is the first O’Neil has put in an auction, it’s not the first she has been offered.

"Somebody offered me a silver winner’s medal from London and when I looked at the photo it was a copy," she says. "You can buy them cheaply on eBay and some people are duped. Someone buys them from eBay for nothing and then sells them to other collectors as official winner’s medals and they don’t know better. It’s pitiful people are apparently falling for these things."

A seller in Spain has been peddling fake medals from Olympic Games including Sydney, Barcelona and Sapporo. These medals look good until they are compared to original medals. Fake participation medals have been coming out of Bulgaria.

O’Neil says there is a law in the United States that anything that is a copy has to be prominently stamped "copy," and she is dismayed that eBay has not rooted out the fakes.

Innsbruck 1964 Torch Brings Record Price

The Innsbruck torch that lit the cauldron in the Bergisel Stadium on Jan. 29, 1964, brought $310,500, the highest price seen at auction for a Winter Games torch. O’Neil said in her catalog that "certainly less than 10" torches from Innsbruck were made, though the exact number is not known.

A 1952 Helsinki torch, one of 22 made, fetched nearly $500,000 in early 2011 while O’Neil sold a Stockholm 1956 torch for $474,375 in April 2014.

More collectors seek the summer torches than the winter ones, and O’Neil set a minimum of $225,000 for the brass, bronze-colored Innsbruck torch.

"I was totally astonished that three bidders would come out wanting to pay that much," O’Neil says.

History Lesson

A silver trophy presented to Paavo Nurmi, one of the legendary "Flying Finns," went for $3,478.75, while a wooden mugpresented toNurmi for lighting the Olympic cauldron in 1952 did not sell at its opening bid of $2,750.

"I would have thought the trophy would go higher," O’Neil says. "I think a lot of the newer collectors are younger and they don’t even know who Paavo Nurmi was. Some collectors asked me, ‘Who was he?’ He was in the 1920s and they want more recent ones they remember."

SouvenirsSell

Besides official items touched by athletes and officials, O’Neil has found success selling souvenirs, like an ashtray emblazoned with a soccer player from the 1924 Paris Olympics ($115) or an alpine ski hut from the 1936 Garmisch Games with a color photo viewer ($143.75).

"They are cute," O’Neil says. "They make a different aspect of your collection – they round it out. They are interesting and are not priced really high. If you like it, go for it. It will never really go up in price, but you can enjoy it."

Sweden to Host Next World’s Fair

The 22nd World Olympic Collectors Fair will be held in Gothenburg, Sweden, from May 13-15.

The event is hosted by the Gothenburg Sports Museum, a member of the Olympic Museums Network since 2013, and the opening reception will be at the Prioritet Serneke Arena, which boasts indoor skiing and indoor and outdoor beach volleyball.

Tables are inexpensive, at only 35 Euro ($38.90) for one, 65 Euro ($72.23) for two and 90 Euro ($100.02) for three. The last day to reserve a table is March 25.

All participants can take free tours of the Gothenburg Sports Museum and attend autograph sessions with Swedish Olympic winners.

The official banquet, with a silent auction, will be held at the Restaurant Kvibergs Kantin.

More information, including how to reserve accommodations, is available at www.gothenburg2016.com.

Gothenburg hosted the 1995 World Championships in Athletics and had hoped to bid for the 2021 edition of the IAAF event until it was awarded to Eugene, Oregon, without the usual bidding procedure.

Written by Karen Rosen

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