Harrison Dillard’s historic 1948 Olympic gold medal on the auction block for $120,000

When Olympic winner’s medals come on the market, the names of the athletes who won them are usually lost to time. A current online auction features a medal with not only provenance, but also a fascinating and historic backstory.

The 1948 Olympic gold medal won by Harrison Dillard has a minimum bid of $120,000 in the auction by Ingrid O’Neil ending April 9. https://auctions.ioneil.com/auctions/1-5MSRHL/auction-91 There are more than 500 lots in the auction, including many other winner’s medals, torches, badges, paper items and seldom-seen works of art.

Dillard, who passed away in November 2019 at age 96, won four gold medals in his Olympic career. His family consigned the medal to O’Neil for the auction and consulted with her on the starting price. There is also a 20 percent buyer’s fee.

O’Neil tells Around the Rings a typical gold medal from 1948 -- medals then were not inscribed with sports or names – would bring “maybe $20,000-$30,000.” But Dillard’s medal is “a lot more appealing,” O’Neil said, because it can be traced to him and “because this is the famous one where Omega had the first photo finish.”

Dillard’s story is one of perseverance and making the best of a bad situation.

In 1948, he was the world record holder in the 110-meter hurdles and simply had to place in the Top 3 at the U.S. Olympic Trials to make the team for the London Games.

”You would think,” Dillard said in a 2012 interview, “that would be almost like a gimme. But not so -- that’s part of the appeal of athletics. Anything can happen.”

Dillard hit the first hurdle, cleared the second, then “bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, I just hit a string of them,” he said.

Although Dillard didn’t finish the race, “as it turned out, luckily I was already on the team,” he said, having qualified third in the 100-meter dash the night before.

Dillard, nicknamed “Bones,” because of how scrawny he was as a youth, would be up against teammates Barney Ewell, the 1936 Olympic silver medalist who won the Trials in the world record time of 10.2 seconds, and Mel Patton, who held the world record at 100 yards (9.3).

There were only six finalists at the time in the Olympics 100, and Dillard drew Lane 6, which was closest to the stands. Previously, runners in Lane 6 were afraid they would be overlooked by the finish-line judges, but for the first time at the Olympic Games, there was a photo-electrical timing system supplied by Omega.

At the tape, Ewell thought he had won because he beat Patton and Lloyd LaBeach of Panama, who were on either side of him.”

He goes into his victory dance, jumping up and down and clasping his hands over his head and celebrating, " Dillard said. “And Lloyd LaBeach, who was to Barney’s right in the next lane, said, ‘No mon, you don’t win. Bones win.’”

The official Omega Timing photo, which Dillard later blew up and hung in his home, determined that he was the champion, equaling the Olympic record of 10.3 seconds. Ewell and LaBeach were timed at 10.4, with Ewell taking the silver.

Dillard became the first 100-meter champion to come from the same high school as the previous champion. Jesse Owens, the 1936 gold medalist who also attended Cleveland’s East Technical High School, was in the stands in London.

As a high school senior, Dillard and Owens went head-to-head in a 120-yard low hurdles race as an exhibition.”

Of course, he beat me, but I had the privilege and pleasure of saying I had run against my idol,” Dillard said.

Going into the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, Dillard chose not to defend his 100-meter title. He made the U.S. team in the 110-meter hurdles and finally won his Olympic gold medal in his favorite event.

”That was like I redeemed myself,” Dillard said. “I had proven that I was still the best 110-meter hurdler in the world.”

There are more than 40 Olympic and Paralympic medals for sale in the O’Neil auction.

Some people may be surprised to learn that there were no gold medals in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens. Winners were awarded silver medals, the runners-up received bronze medals and third-place finishers got no medal at all.

Soon after the O’Neil’s auction went up, an 1896 silver medal had a bid of $80,000, which would be $96,000 with the buyer’s premium.

Last July, a similar medal offered by RR Auction sold for a total of $180,111.

O’Neil also has a 1904 St. Louis gold medal for soccer on the block for $95,000, with no bids yet. The medal is solid gold and was awarded to the Galt Football Club from Ontario, Canada.

A silver medal from the first Winter Olympic Games in Chamonix in 1924 has a bid of $26,000 while a gold medal from the 1976 Montreal Games javelin throw awarded to Ruth Fuchs of East Germany has a bid of $18,000.

”For the first time, I have four Paralympic gold medals,” O’Neil said. “I’m pretty sure they will sell.

”More than 30 Olympic torches are also in the auction, including one from the 2022 Beijing Winter Games which has met the opening bid of $12,000.

”I hardly had the auction up and there was the bid already,” O’Neil said. I had not even announced it was up. I was so astonished.”

O’Neil said new collectors of Olympic memorabilia are attracted to winner’s medals and torches “because they are the main thing when you think about the Olympic Games. It’s just that you need some money to collect those.”

The auction includes works of art, such as a piece from the 2000 Sydney Games made from the same coil of steel from the Olympic cauldron and the same batch of silver used to strike the winner’s medals. It has an opening bid of $3,000.

”These were auctioned daily during the Olympic Torch Relay and actually went in the thousands of dollars every day,” O’Neil said. “They were very, very popular.”

While she hopes all of the lots sell, there are two that she is particularly keen to get out of her house.

In 1924, Fernand Coffin made a series of sculptures of sports figures for the Paris Olympics, which are made of plaster and stand about 11 inches high. O’Neil has figures of a rugby player and a runner with opening bids of $750 apiece.

The looks on the figures’ faces are actually quite disturbing, with piercing blue eyes and frowns.

”Part of my family is really scared of them,” O’Neil said. “I hope somebody will buy them.”