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Canwest News Service
VANCOUVER – The day after the 2010 Olympic torch relay was launched in Victoria on Oct. 30, someone put one of the 12,000 Vancouver Olympic torches up for sale on eBay.
A second torch was listed on eBay on Thursday, one of almost 800 Vancouver Olympics items being sold on the Internet auction site.
There were listings for 2010 Olympic Torch Relay "Team Coke Cans," Vancouver 2010 Olympic mittens, and a 2010 Vancouver Olympic street banner.
You could bid on a 2010 Polish National Olympic Committee pin, 2010 Olympic coins, and a 2010 Olympics "snowboarder metal water bottle" from McDonald's.
Most of the items listed were nickel-and-dime stuff; the "limited edition" Team Coke cans attracted eight bidders, but sold for only $17.64.
The Olympic torch is another matter. The minimum opening bid was $2,500 US, and it had a bidder within a few hours of going up for sale.
That bidder might be kicking him or herself, however, because the second torch had a starting bid of only $800 US. Three bidders had pushed the price up to $1,025 US by Thursday afternoon.
In any event, the Olympics are a collector's dream. There will be an endless stream of Olympic items – pins, posters, programs, tickets, T-shirts, leaflets, badges, buttons – floating around the city when the Games hit town in February.
But don't be thinking you're going to get rich by buying a truckload of Quatchi, Sumi, Miga and Muk Muk Olympic mascot dolls and sitting on them for a couple of years. Commercially sold Olympic souvenirs like the mascots can take years to appreciate in value, and may never be worth much money.
In the world of Olympics collectibles, the key to value is rarity. And the rarest commodity is an Olympic medal.
"Everybody would like a winner's medal, but most people can't afford one," said Ingrid O'Neil, who runs an Olympic memorabilia auction out of Vancouver, Wash.
"I would think a winner's medal . . . it depends if it's gold, silver, or bronze, but I think I would pay on the spot $25,000 for a gold medal."
But she doesn't expect one to come up for a while.
"They will be very, very, very hard to get," O'Neil said.
"Many countries now offer a lot of money to their medal winners, so they don't need to sell their medals any more. When the Soviet Union still existed, the eastern European countries had so little money, if – an athlete – sold their medals for a few thousand dollars that was several years income for them.
"Nowadays I think in Russia they get $50,000 for a gold medal. They don't sell their medals for a few thousand dollars any more."
If you can't lay your hands on a gold, silver or bronze, the next best thing is the "participation medal" every athlete gets for showing up and competing.
"There are a lot of collectors who want participation medals of each Olympiad," said O'Neil, a German who has been dealing in Olympic memorabilia since the mid-1980s.
"It depends on how many are available, (but they can be worth) more than $100 for sure."
"The most expensive medal we've sold is a participation medal for the 1904 St. Louis Summer Olympics," said Chris Ivey of Heritage Auctions in Dallas, which often sells Olympic memorabilia in its sports auctions.
"That's because it's so rare . Everyone who's an Olympic medal collector is looking for this participation medal. It went for $16,700 US."
The 1904 St. Louis Games also produced O'Neil's biggest sale: $50,000 US for a gold medal.
"At that Olympiad they had real gold medals," O'Neil said.
"Actually there were four Olympiads that had real gold medals: Paris 1900, St. Louis 1904, London 1908, and Stockholm 1912. Sometimes you hear from (modern) gold medal winners, `Oh my gold medal should be worth so much, just for the gold.' They do not realize (they are made out of) six grams of gold over sterling silver. They are not gold."
The prices paid for Olympic memorabilia varies widely. Torches are a good example. O'Neil put an estimate of $22,500 on a torch from the 1976 Winter Games in Innsbruck, $3,250 for a torch from the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, and $2,250 for a torch from the 2004 Summer Games in Athens.
The difference? Rarity. Because there are so many Vancouver torches, she figures they'll probably sell for $1,000 US in a couple of years.
The Olympics are a worldwide phenomenon, and the big Olympics dealers are international. Canada's premier hockey auctioneer, Marc Juteau of Classic Collectibles in Montreal, doesn't even know of a Canadian dealer that specializes in Olympics memorabilia.
But Juteau often offers Olympic sweaters in his auctions. He has a big Olympic auction planned for January that will feature items such as a 1964 Canadian national team sweater and an autographed stick from the 1924 Canadian Olympic team.
Collectors tend to look for stuff from their home countries. Elaine Tanner's three Olympic medals (two silvers and one bronze from 1968) would be worth more to a Canadian than an American, say, because Canadians of a certain age remember her amazing swimming in Mexico City.
A Canadian auction house approached Tanner and her husband John Watt a few years ago trying to buy her medals. Watt said the offer was $10,000, "conditional on the whole package of three Olympic medals, seven Commonwealth (Games medals) and a rare Order of Canada medal."
Tanner declined, although she admits the medals aren't that big a deal to her.
"At one time they were in my grandmother's sewing box, along with my Commonwealth medals," she said, with a laugh, from Victoria.
Tanner has given almost all her Olympic stuff to be auctioned off by charities over the years. Her favourite Olympic piece was a white quilted coat that Canada's female athletes got in 1968, but she's not quite sure what happened to it. "It probably fell apart and is mothballed somewhere."
Her favourite memorabilia story isn't from the Olympics, but from the Pan-Am Games in Winnipeg in 1967.
"This is kind of a funny aside, but back in '67 for the Pan-Am Games, we're talking (the era of) platform shoes and the mod stuff," she recounted.
"The girls ended up getting these old Hush Puppies. Remember the old Hush- Puppy shoes, felt jobs that looked like school-marm shoes? Well, the girls thought, `We're not going to march in these things and look like geeks.' So we actually went out and bought ourselves high-heeled shoes to march in.
"The funny part is the day of the opening ceremonies (it rained). The track back then wasn't synthetic grass, it was real. And it poured with rain in Winnipeg. We started marching in these high-heeled shoes, and we were losing them on the track, because they were getting stuck in the mud. And we wished we had the Hush Puppies back!"
Does she still have her Olympic high heels?
"No," she replies. "I think they're still stuck in the mud. Check in Winnipeg at the stadium. Who knows, maybe one of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers might have tripped over it or something."
And who knows what they'd be worth if she still had them.
