An Oscar can only, officially, be sold for $1 – but that hasn’t stopped a small but lucrative black market. Where are all those that have disappeared?
In March 2000, three weeks before the 72nd Academy Awards, that year’s entire shipment of Oscars – 55 individually marked, 24-carat-gold-plated statuettes – mysteriously disappeared en route from the manufacturer in Chicago to Los Angeles. The story briefly became a showbiz sensation: the Academy set up a 24-hour tip line; the handling company offered a $50,000 reward; the FBI became involved. But the culprits were no master criminals: they turned out to be a couple of light-fingered but loose-tongued delivery workers, who had stumbled on the crate and thought they had struck gold. They were arrested within days and the show went on.
Had these thieves somehow been able to sell the Oscars on the open market, they might have been in for a shock. The going rate for 55 new Oscar statues is $55. Since 1951, all Academy Award winners must sign an agreement that they “shall not sell or otherwise dispose of the Oscar statuette, nor permit it to be sold or disposed of by operation of law, without first offering to sell it to the Academy for the sum of $1”. The rule also applies to anyone who receives or inherits someone else’s Oscar.
