OLYMPIC MEDAL COLLECTION DISPLAYED 上市 Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 7, Number 29, July 18, 2004, Article 10
OLYMPIC MEDAL COLLECTION DISPLAYED
There was an Associated Press story this week about
a display of Olympic participation medals in San Diego:"Art Prior has 16 Olympic medals -- six first-place,
seven seconds, and three thirds. He's been a regular at
the Summer Olympics since 1972. And, at 63, he still
runs sprints every day.But the last time the San Diego resident had a medal
hung around his neck was in high school. And, to be
honest, he's never been cheered on the Olympic podium.Instead, Prior is one of a small but dedicated group of
people worldwide who collect Olympic medals -- a
feat in itself."It's probably as difficult as collecting the Medal of Honor,"
Prior said.""Despite the challenges, Prior's collection -- which is on
display this summer at a local sports museum, the San Diego
Hall of Champions -- has slowly and steadily grown at a
rate of about a medal a year. For 15 years he has combed
garage sales, antique stores, memorabilia catalogs and
eBay for medals, though many have come to him through
Olympic memorabilia dealers.The difficulty is, of course, that few medal winners want to
part with their prizes.""You put scarcity and personal involvement together, and
you've got something that's very hard to get out of somebody's
hands," Cincinnati-based collector Pete Wade said. "Even if
there were 10,000 of them, people would be hard-pressed to
give them up.""Still, Wade has managed to collect almost 50 Olympic
medals, which were displayed at the Salt Lake City and
Atlanta games.Both Wade and Prior have gotten help building their collections
from Ingrid O'Neil, an Olympics memorabilia dealer in
Vancouver, Wash., who each year auctions off between 20
and 30 medals. O'Neil said the medals become available in a
variety of ways.""A medal that was minted but never awarded -- if there was a
tie, for example -- might be had for as little as $1,500, but a
rare medal from the first modern Olympics in 1896 can go for
upward of $20,000. Medals with documentation showing
they belonged to famous winners sometimes go for more.Australian track and field star Shirley Strickland de la Hunty
sold her seven medals as part of a lot of Olympic memorabilia
at a 2001 auction, fetching about $200,000. She was criticized
by some for doing so, but said she owed it to her 11
grandchildren to help pay for their education.""Prior says he is proud of his collection, but his pride can't
match that of an athlete who earned it.After all, he said, "I just bought these things."
To read the full story, see: Full Story
- 2004-07-18
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