Two More Jesse Owens Gold Medals to be Auctioned

(ATR) Jesse Owens struggled financially following his 1936 Olympic success, but others are cashing in on the medals he used to pay off personal and professional debts.

Three of the four Owens gold medals -- thought for decades to be lost -- resurfaced with provenance in the last four years and have been put up for sale in auctions.

The first sold for $1.466 million in December 2013, the highest price fetched by an Olympic collectible. Owens gave this medal to his friend Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, who is best known for tap dancing in movies with Shirley Temple. (From 1922 to 1977, Robinson was also the world record holder for running 100 yards backward in 13.5 seconds, but that unfortunately is not an Olympic event.)

Owens was grateful to Robinson for helping him secure a contract as bandleader of a 12-piece big band, which was a more dignified job than stunt racing against horses.

Two more gold medals will be sold in August by Dallas, Texas-based Heritage Auctions with estimates of $500,000 apiece. The participation medal given to Owens is also for sale with an estimate of $30,000 -- which is 100 times more than an ordinary Berlin medal brings. Each of the medals has its original box.

According to "Jesse Owens: The Tale Behind the Discovery of His Olympic Medals," in the current issue of "Intelligent Collector" magazine, Owens paid his bill for lengthy stays in a Pittsburgh hotel with three gold medals and the participation medal in 1955.

Owens reportedly once said, "I had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals."

The hotel owner, Harry Bailey, also ran into financial difficulties and pawned the medals. A handyman named Louis DeVito loaned Bailey money and the hotelier repaid him with the pawn ticket. "Just take the pawn ticket," Bailey told DeVito. "Take what’s there. You’ll find four boxes I got from Jesse Owens." The story does not address whether or not DeVito had to pay any money to Maxie’s Pawn Shop, the usual method for retrieving pawned items.

DeVito gave one of the medals back to his friend Bailey, and this medal is still unaccounted for.

"At the time, these all meant very little to us, as the medals had no value that we knew," DeVito told "Intelligent Collector."

Albert DeVito said his father showed him the medals in the 1990s and he began to research Owens and talked to friends of Bailey, who died in 1973. He said he "called Olympic committees" and talked to William Baker, who wrote a biography of Owens.

"It wasn’t until the first gold medal sold," Albert DeVito said, "that we even thought, ‘Oh my goodness. These things are worth something!’"

They certainly are.

Owens won the 100- and 200-meter dashes, the long jump and ran the opening leg on the 4x100-meter relay. None of the medals have any markings to determine which event they represent.

Owens eventually asked Germany to replace his gold medals, which he said were lost. These replacement medals are in a museum at his alma mater, Ohio State University. Owens also hit his stride in the 1960s, making money promoting physical education and as an Olympic goodwill ambassador. He died in 1980 of lung cancer after a lifetime of smoking,

The auction of the first medal drew the attention of IOC President Thomas Bach who told the Associated Press in November 2013 that it has "an importance far beyond the sporting achievements of Jesse Owens, which is part of world history. To put this up for an auction is for me a very difficult decision (to accept)."

Ron Burkle, co-owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team, won the first medal and promised to send it on a tour of historical memorabilia.

And that fourth medal is still out there.

Rio Medal Featured as O’Neil Auctions Go Online

Auctioneer Ingrid O’Neil of California has added an online bidding component at www.ioneil.com for her 80th Auction of Olympic memorabilia, which closes April 29. Bids for the 518 lots are also accepted by phone, fax, mail and email.

Bidders can now watch the auction in progress online. A 2016 Rio Olympic bronze medal in its original case already has met its minimum bid of $25,000, while the presentation sculpture awarded to gold medalists on the podium has multiple bids and is currently at $900.

A 1952 Oslo silver medal for the ski jump has met its minimum of $32,500. From the 1980 Lake Placid Games, a gold medal for bobsled has a bid at $25,500, while competition is already brisk for a 1988 Seoul gold, now at $24,000.

The rarest item could be the first proposed mascot for the 1968 Grenoble Games, a red cloth dolphin, which has a bid at $800. Although there were 8,000 torchbearers for the 2012 London Games, many have held onto the memento of their run. With that scarcity in mind, a London torch has met its opening bid of $6,500.

Swiss Auction Features 1936 Items

The latest online auction from David Feldman of Switzerland closes May 16. Among the 338 Olympic items for sale, more than half are from the 1936 Olympic Games and can be found at www.davidfeldman.com.

The lots, which span 1896 to 1972, include a lot of paper items with most prices starting under 100 Euro. For example, 1912 Stockholm and 1928 Amsterdam programs begin at 30 Euro, while 1928 Amsterdam regulations in many sports start at 40 Euro apiece.

Two Olympic lots carry the highest starting price of 500 Euro. They are a 1936 Berlin gold medal winner’s stick pin that did not have its swastika removed and a group of 27 various Berlin tickets, programs and documents.

1936 Autographs to benefit Jackie Robinson Foundation

Olympic history buffs know that the older brother of baseball hero Jackie Robinson was a great athlete in his own right. Mack Robinson won the silver medal in the 200 meters at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games behind Owens. A framed print signed by Robinson, Owens and 92 other U.S. Olympians is part of the Jackie Robinson 70th Anniversary Auction to Benefit the Jackie Robinson Foundation. Bidding is open through April 29 at GoldinAuctions.com.

Athletes signed their names around a black-and-white landscape print. They include Cornelius Johnson, the gold-medal winning high jumper whom Adolf Hitler refused to greet because he was African-American. Some stories mistakenly say that Owens was the athlete snubbed, although Owens pointed out that he was actually snubbed by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt. The print has an estimate of $15,000+. As of Thursday morning, the bidding was up to $7,000.

Written by Karen Rosen

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