Olympic medals and memorabilia are quite often auctioned by Olympians and administrators.
US Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte, once again, joined the bandwagon by auctioning three of his Olympic relay gold medals on Saturday night at Goldin for a combined price of $385,520, including buyers’ premium.
It included Lochte’s 4x200m freestyle relay gold medal from the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, which led the trio with a final price of $183,000. That medal also carried a premium as part of Michael Phelps’ record eight gold medals.
Meanwhile, his other medals — 2004 Athens Summer Olympics 4×200-meter relay gold medal ($80,520) and 2016 Rio Summer Olympics 4×200-meter freestyle relay gold medal ($122,000) — fetched noteworthy prices.
With this, Lochte sold nine medals for $551,520.
In 2022, Lochte made his first auction of medals because they were “collecting dust.” The amount collected from those medals went to the Jorge Nation Foundation, a non-profit organization raising money to send terminally ill children on trips.
“I never swam for the gold medals,” Lochte wrote on Instagram. “My passion has always been about being one of the best swimmers in the world. Those medals? They were just the cherry on top of an incredible journey.”
Lochte has three more medals in possession.
Similar to Lochte, earlier this year, America’s most decorated diver, Greg Louganis sold two golds and one silver for $430,865.