Donald Trump has spent years openly coveting a Nobel Peace Prize, repeatedly complaining about being overlooked, arguing that former President Barack Obama didn’t deserve one, and arguing that his foreign policy record deserved global recognition. Now, even as he insists he no longer cares about the honor, he has sent a threatening letter to Greenland about not being awarded by Norway. Last week when Venezuela’s opposition leader María Corina Machado theatrically presented her Nobel Peace Prize medal to Trump, the the Norwegian Nobel Committee stressed that the award was not transferable, could not be shared, or reassigned.
For What It’s Worth
The Nobel Peace Prize remains one of the world’s most revered awards.
The Nobel Prize has long stood for moral authority, intellectual rigor, and humanitarian achievement. But history shows that while the honor itself cannot be reassigned, the physical medal most certainly can be sold–and sometimes for millions.
Nobel Prizes are awarded in six fields: Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Peace, and Economic Sciences and they recognize outstanding contributions to humanity.
Since the 1980s, Nobel medals have been minted using 18-karat recycled gold. Melted down, they are worth surprisingly little. Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov’s 175-gram Peace Prize medal, fo example, contained gold valued at roughly $10,000. Yet as artifacts, they can command millions. With gold currently trading at more than $4,600 an ounce, that $10,000 figure from 2022 would be almost $20,000 now.
In 2022 Muratov auctioned his Nobel Peace Prize medal for a record-breaking $103.5 million. The proceeds were donated to UNICEF to support Ukrainian child refugees displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Prior to that, the highest price paid for a Nobel medal was $4.76 million in 2014, when James Watson sold his prize for co-discovering the structure of DNA, Th New York Times reported. Three years later, the heirs of his co-recipient Francis Crick sold Crick’s medal for $2.27 million, with proceeds supporting medical research. Other Nobel medals have gone for seven-figures as well, including the 1936 Peace Prize awarded to Argentine diplomat Carlos Saavedra Lamas, which sold for $1.1 million.
The 1994 Economics Prize awarded to mathematician John Nash sold for under $1 million in 2019. Physicist Kenneth Wilson’s 1982 medal failed to get a $450,000 minimum bid in 2016. And, William Faulkner’s Literature Prize failed to sell in 2013 after bidding stalled below expectations.
In addition to the medal, awardees are also given a monetary award. The current Nobel Prize award is set at 11 million Swedish kronor, which is approximately $1 million. The prize money may be shared by up to three laureates, with the total amount divided among them.
