Just in Time for Tokyo Games, Olympic Items Up for Auction
Voice of America
BOSTON - When the first modern Olympics were held in Athens in 1896, winners did not get gold medals as they will later this month when the Tokyo games get under way. Instead, they got silver, while runners-up got bronze. There were no medals for third place.
One of those exceedingly rare first-place silver medals is for sale in an Olympics-themed auction that opens Thursday. The nearly 200-lot sale hosted by Boston-based RR Auction also includes a gold medal won by the 1984 U.S. men's basketball team and several Olympic torches, including one used during last year's torch relay before it was shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. "Interest is high now with the Tokyo Olympics approaching," RR Auction Executive Vice President Bobby Livingston said.Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in this still picture taken from a video, May 26, 2024. Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. A member of the bomb squad of the Israeli police collects debris after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck in the Israeli city of Herzliya on May 26, 2024.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, right, and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, left, leave a podium after marking Independence Day in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024. Demonstrators with Georgian national and EU flags rally during an opposition protest against a foreign influence bill as they mark their country's Independence Day, in the center of in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024.