Tokyo 2020 Olympics has come to an end. From waking up at 5 am to watch the Indian athletes compete to downloading the Olympics app to receive updates regarding the games, my entire family has enjoyed the thrill that the games had to offer. I surely will miss the lunchtime Olympic watch but will soon get used to my 2 pm online classes!
It has become my habit to read the newspaper from the last page because all the sporting news is on the last page (sometimes the second-last page too). The other day, I read an article about how you can 'buy' an Olympic medal. Can an athlete, who puts years of practice and sacrifices to win an Olympic medal, so easily put up their medal for auction? Well, the answer is yes. Desperate times call for desperate measures. (I don't want Neeraj Chopra to sell his gold medal in the coming future!)
Many former Olympians had to sell their medals owing to financial hardships. On the eve of this year's Tokyo Games, 1896's first-place silver medal (there were no gold medals at that time) from the first modern Olympics in Athens was sold for $180,111.
1896 Athen's first-place silver medal
The Boston-based auction house, RR auction handled the sale of that medal plus two more medals- a silver medal from the Paris 1900 Olympics- was sold for $1,283 and a bronze medal from the 1956 Winter Games in Cortina d' Ampezzo, Italy-was sold for $3,750.
Bobby Livingston, an executive vice-president of RR auction said, "It's a niche collectible".
Even though the athlete's name isn't mentioned on the medals, the circumstances under which the athlete won the medal play a crucial role in determining its price.
Jesse Owens (via Sports Illustrated)
In 2019, a collector paid $1.5 million for one of the four gold medals won by Jesse Owens at the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin. According to the SCP auction, it is the most expensive Olympic memorabilia as Jesse Owens, a Black American track and field athlete won the medal when Adolf Hilter was present in the stadium to watch him compete.
Well, few athletes even sell their medals for fundraisers. Polish javelin thrower, Maria Andrejczyk decided to auction off her Tokyo 2020 silver medal to help fund heart surgery for an eight-month-old boy at Stanford Hospital in the USA.
Maria Andrejczyk with her Tokyo 2020 medal (via Sports Illustrated)
Adrejczyk was diagnosed with bone cancer in 2018 after coming fourth at the Rio 2016 games, she recovered just in time to compete for Tokyo 2020 and eventually went on to win a medal. On Monday, she confirmed that the Polish convenience store, Zabka has donated enough money to cross the £140,000- mark. Moreover, the convenience store has insisted Andrejcyk keep her medal with herself.
According to the International Olympic Committee, the gold medals awarded in Tokyo contained more silver than actual gold: 6 grams of silver for the 556 grams medal. The silver medals were made out of pure silver and they weighed 550 grams.
Mr. Newman, Managing Director of Metals Focus, a London-based research firm said that the metal costs for making the gold medal would be $800, $450 for the silver medal and the bronze medals would be worth significantly less as they contain 95% copper and 5% zinc.
"If you're winning, I think the value is probably irrelevant," Mr. Newman said. "I'd be surprised if anyone thought they were pure gold." "They're still Olympic medals," he said. "Third place is still pretty darned good. As a collector, you can start with bronze if you don't have a lot of money."
MESSIVE MOVE
The next big thing that has happened after the Olympics (other than the beginning of the Paralympics) is the Messive Move- Lionel Messi's move from Barcelona to Paris. Messi, whose net salary at Barcelona used to be 74.9 million euros, decided to seal the deal with Paris Saint Germain. The 34-year-old Argentine-Spaniard (he has had dual citizenship since 2005) joined the wealthy PSG-who already have impressive attackers such as Brazil's Neymar and young Frenchman Kylian Mbappe.
Lionel Messi poses with his new jersey (via Skysports)
According to the Spanish publication Marca, at least eight out of the ten FC Barcelona shirts that are brought by customers are sold with Messi's mane and number printed. Nike is now left with thousands of shirts with Messi's name on it. The sale of Messi's shirt fetches around 20-30 million euros per year. This amount does not include the other merchandise items!
In the recent video posted by Reuters, it can be seen that the stores in Paris had big queues to get Lionel Messi's PSG jersey. PSG has already received more than a million orders-both in online stores and physical stores. Each jersey is worth around €115 to € 165. So, PSG would have earned $100,000,000 till now!
(Cover image courtesy: Sportskeeda)
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