The Nobel Peace Prize auctioned by Russian journalist Dmitri A. Muratov to help Ukrainian refugees was sold Monday night for $103.5 million to an anonymous buyer, shattering the record for a Nobel Prize.
Proceeds from the auction will go to UNICEF to help Ukrainian children and their families displaced by the Russian invasion of their country.
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 DailyExpertNews last month, he said he was inspired to auction off the prize he won last year by Danish physicist Niels Bohr, who sold his medal to help civilian relief in Finland after the Soviet invasion of Finland. that country in 1939 .
“We hope this will serve as an example for other people, like a flash mob, for other people to auction their valuables, their heirlooms, to help refugees, Ukrainian refugees around the world,” Muratov said in a speech from the stadium before the bidding began.
The previous record for auctioning a Nobel medal came in 2014, when the prize of James Watson, who shared in the discovery of DNA’s double helix structure, sold for $4.1 million ($4.76 million, including the commission that goes to the auction house).
Heritage Auctions, which handled the sale of Mr. Muratov’s medal, has sold five former Nobel prizes, including that for Watson’s co-discoverer, Francis Crick. That medal sold in 2013 for $2.27 million.
Josh Benesh, the chief strategy officer for Heritage Auctions, which will take no commission on the sale, said he was stunned by the final price. The bidding mainly went in $100,000 or $200,000 increments, when it suddenly surged from $16.6 million to $103.5 million. Gasping filled the room as a Heritage Auctions employee on the phone gave the number.
“I don’t think the object mattered,” Mr Benesh said of the 23-carat gold Nobel prize up for auction. “I think the object is a metaphor, it’s a symbol for something. It’s the chance to stand up and say, ‘This is a goal that has meaning and it’s a problem that a donation can begin to solve.’”
Mr. Muratov is considered the dean of Russia’s controversial independent press, and Novaya Gazeta has been acclaimed since its inception in 1993 for its investigative journalism and campaigning for children with rare diseases and families in need. His words at the auction resonated with some in 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 around the world not to slacken in their efforts to help Ukraine.
“We hear the silence from everyone around us,” she said. “We understand. They are tired, but so are we. It is in everyone’s best interest for a human that this victory comes soon.”