The Nobel Peace Prize has been auctioned off by Russian journalist Dmitry A. Muratov to help Ukrainian refugees sell Monday night for $ 103.5 million to an anonymous buyer, breaking the record for a Nobel medal.
Proceeds from the auction will go to UNICEF to help Ukrainian children and their families displaced by the Russian invasion of their country.
Mr. Muratov is the editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which suspended publication in March in response to the Kremlin’s increasingly draconian press laws. In an interview with The New York Times last month, he said he was inspired to auction off the award won last year by Danish physicist Niels Bohr, who sold his medal to help civilians in Finland after the Soviet invasion of this country in 1939..
“We hope that this will serve as an example for other people as a flash mob, for other people to auction off their valuable possessions, their inheritances, to help refugees, Ukrainian refugees around the world,” Mr. Muratov in a stage speech before the bidding began.
The previous auction record for a Nobel medal came in 2014, when the James Watson Prize, which was involved in the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, was sold for 4, $ 1 million ($ 4.76 million, including the commission that goes to DNA). auction house).
Heritage Auctions, which handled the sale of Mr. Muratov has sold five former Nobel Prizes, including one awarded to Watson co-discoverer Francis Crick. This medal sold for $ 2.27 million in 2013.
Josh Benesh, the director of strategy at Heritage Auctions, which will not charge a commission for the sale, said he was stunned by the final price. The bidding had been developed primarily in increments of $ 100,000 or $ 200,000 when it suddenly increased from $ 16.6 million to $ 103.5 million. The slaps filled the room when a Heritage Auctions employee handling the phone transmitted the figure.
“I don’t think the object mattered,” Benesh said of the 23-carat gold medal at auction. “I think the object is a metaphor, it’s a symbol of something. It is an opportunity to stand up and say, “This is a cause that makes sense and a problem that a donation can begin to solve.”
Mr. Muratov is considered the dean of the Russian independent press, and Novaya Gazeta has been praised since its founding in 1993 for its investigative journalism and its campaigns for children with rare diseases and troubled families. His words at the auction resonated with some of the crowd.
Polina Buchak, a 24-year-old Ukrainian filmmaker and activist living in New York, said some of her relatives are refugees. She hopes the auction will encourage the New York community and those around the world not to give in to their efforts to help Ukraine.
“We are listening to the silence of everyone around us,” he said. “It simply came to our notice then. They are tired, but so are we. It is in the interests of all human beings that this victory will come soon. “