Jesse Owens won four gold medals (the 100 meter, 200 meter, the 400 meter relay and the long jump) at the 1936 summer games in Berlin, Germany. With this win, he put a real dent in Hitler's propaganda war but really struggled when he returned back home to a segregated and struggling economy which continued to have high unemployment. Owens gave one of his four gold medals to Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, an African American tap dancer and movie star of the time. After his death, it passed on to his wife and then to her daughter in 2007. And now it is up for auction.
Compared to the current crop of
gold medals we talked about recently, this one is worth a whole lot more. The historic and collectible value is significant and as expected, the
online auction at SCP is already past the $50,000 minimum bid and at just over $172,000. Surely a good catch or the right (and wealthy) collector. We've seen the value of fine art and other tangible assets go on an upward trajectory for over a decade, so is this a good investment too?