Olympic medals hit the market in record number

A winning performance is not the only means to an Olympic gold medal.

Sometimes it only takes a winning bid.

Gold, silver and bronze Olympic winners' medals pop up regularly in auctions around the world and occasionally on eBay. Collectors compete as avidly for them as sprinters in the 100-meter dash final.

Medals are also sold privately, sometimes before the Olympic flame goes out.

"People will tell you, 'There's no way you'll ever get one of them,'" said Don Bigsby, president of the Olympin Collectors Club. "When you're a collector, that's what sets you in motion to try to get them."

On Thursday, 14 Olympic medals go on the block in a live sale conducted by RR Auction in Boston. Another 40 medals, including 17 that were not awarded, are part of the Ingrid O'Neil mail bid auction ending Oct. 4. The next 17 days offer the greatest number of Olympic medals for public consumption with the exception of the Games themselves.

"It's the thrill," O'Neil said. "People would like to be a winner, they would like to participate, but they never can. So their next best thing is they own one of these medals."

While athletes sacrifice blood, sweat and years for a medal, the cost to purchase one is not as dear as you'd expect from recent high-profile sales.

Last December, one of the four Olympic gold medals won by Jesse Owens in 1936 was snapped up for a record $1.47 million by billionaire Ron Burkle.

A "Miracle on Ice" 1980 ice hockey gold medal awarded to Mark Wells sold for $310,700 in 2010, while a similar medal belonging to Mark Pavelich and engraved with his name went for $262,900 last May.

"Everybody who calls me and says, 'I want to sell a medal' and I give them a quote of what medals usually bring — they are totally disappointed," said O'Neil, who has auctioned Olympic memorabilia for 25 years. "They can't believe it. They think, 'OK, Jesse Owens' medal went for $1.4 million, mine should be worth at least $200,000 or $300,000.'"

Instead, O'Neil estimates that the most common bronze medal from the Summer Olympics should bring $5,000-$6,000, a silver $8,000 and a gold $10,000. In addition, gold medals have not been solid gold since 1912. They are mostly silver.

Winter Olympic medals are rarer because there are fewer athletes and events. They can range from about $10,000 to more than $30,000.

Extra medals are made in case of ties or to be given to dignitaries. Many are indistinguishable from awarded medals, though some may lack additional engraving of the event name. In O'Neil's auction, two 1932 medals are marked as souvenirs and 12 came from the studio of the 1932 designer.

O'Neil believes only 50 people around the world collect Olympic medals, half of them in the U.S.

One of those is Raleigh DeGeer Amyx, whose collection is being sold Thursday along with about 325 other items of Americana including Dwight D. Eisenhower's Rolex wristwatch and FDR's cape.

The rarest medal in the collection is a bronze from the 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen Winter Games, one of only 36. Bidding had topped $13,000 by Monday. Amyx said he didn't wait until he could find a gold. "Beggars can't be choosers," he said.

Before 1960, most medals were not engraved with the sport or event, so their history has been lost in time.

Jim Greensfelder, a member of the IOC Collectors Commission who has handled many sales, said Olympic medals usually come from an athlete "in bad shape financially" or the heirs of deceased athletes who "can't make a decision on who's going to get it."

"You would think, 'I can't believe that they wouldn't want to keep it in the family,'" he said, "but they don't come to some kind of conclusion to make that happen, so they sell it off."

Dick Fosbury, who won a gold medal in 1968 in the high jump, doesn't resent people who buy the same type of medal he earned.

"Most collectors really care about the objects," he said. "They are careful and understand that it's precious."

Scott Reed mostly collects pins from National Olympic Committees because of their direct association with athletes.

But after attending the Olympics in his hometown of Atlanta in 1996, he had a bigger goal.

"In my mind, a medal was the ultimate item I could possibly collect from the Atlanta Games," Reed said, "because it was the most recognizable and universally accepted athlete's item."

Another collector offered him a gold in cycling for $5,000, telling him it was won by Zulfia Zabirova of Russia in the road time trial.

"The story was she won her event," Reed said, "got her medal at the ceremony and while leaving the event site she sold her medal, went straight to the airport and flew home."

Although there are fewer older medals, they are easier to find than recent ones. About 2,100 medals were minted for the 2012 London Olympics, but none have yet appeared at auction.

Many medals used to come out of the former Eastern Bloc, but that changed with the arrival of capitalism as well as the prize money national Olympic committees are now awarding medal winners.

"They don't need the money nearly like they used to," said Jonathan Becker, an Olympic memorabilia historian.

In Cuba, athletes still do. There was a guaranteed flow of medals the last 25 years out of Cuba, but the number was dramatically reduced when baseball left the program after Beijing.

Amyx said that of the 29 medals won by Cuba in 2000, he acquired eight of them. However, he said, "If they wanted their medal back, I guaranteed a hold for at least a decade. I returned three of the eight.

"I was sort of like a nice guy pawn shop interest free."