Story highlights
- Jesse Owens' only remaining gold medal sells at auction for nearly $1.5 million
- It's the highest price ever paid for Olympic memorabilia
- New owner Ron Burkle, co-owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins, plans to put in on tour
- It is unclear what happened to Owens' three other medals
Jesse Owens' 1936 gold medal sold for $1,466,574 at auction Sunday, setting a record for the highest price ever paid for Olympic memorabilia.
New owner Ron Burkle, a billionaire investor and co-owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team, plans to use it for a future educational tour of historic pieces.
This medal is considered one of the most important in Olympics history and is one of four Owens won at the 1936 games in Berlin, spoiling Adolf Hitler's planned showcase of Aryan superiority.
Imagine the shock to Nazi Party elites when a black American, the son of a sharecropper and a grandson of slaves, stared down fascist propaganda, bested his rivals and took home four gold medals.
Hitler was furious, but tens of thousands of ordinary Germans cheered him on.
Photos: Art and collectibles: Going, going, gone wild
Photos: Art and collectibles: Going, going, gone wild
The iconic blue gingham apron and shirt costume that Judy Garland wore as Dorothy in the 1939 classic "The Wizard of Oz" sold for $1,565,000 at a New York auction. Here are other items that fetched eye-popping record sales prices on the auction block in recent times:
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Photos: Art and collectibles: Going, going, gone wild
June 2015 has been a big month for art auctioneers. Artist Chris Ofili's controversial work "The Holy Virgin Mary," which shows an African Virgin Mary covered with elephant dung, sold for $4,522,643 at Christie's -- a record for the artist, according to the auction house.
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Photos: Art and collectibles: Going, going, gone wild
When Pablo Picasso's "Les Femmes d'Alger (Version O)" sold for $179,365,000, it broke the world auction record for any work of art, according to Christie's.
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Photos: Art and collectibles: Going, going, gone wild
Jesse Owens' 1936 Olympic Gold Medal sold for $1,466,574 at auction in December 2013, setting a record for the highest price paid for Olympic memorabilia. This medal is considered one of the most important in Olympics history and is one of four Owens won at the games in Berlin, spoiling Adolf Hitler's planned showcase of Aryan superiority.
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Photos: Art and collectibles: Going, going, gone wild
Norman Rockwell's painting "Saying Grace" sold for $46 million in 2013 at Sotheby's American Art auction. It was a record for works by the late artist and for a single American painting. The illustration originally appeared on the Thanksgiving issue cover of The Saturday Evening Post in 1951.
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Photos: Art and collectibles: Going, going, gone wild
"The Whole Booke of Psalmes" -- universally known as "The Bay Psalm Book" -- was produced in the virtual wilderness of Massachusetts Bay Colony by the Congregationalist Puritans. When it sold for $14,165,000, it set a world auction record for any printed book.
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Photos: Art and collectibles: Going, going, gone wild
Titanic band leader Wallace Hartley's violin sold for $1.7 million at Henry Aldridge and Son Auctioneers in Devizes, England -- by far the highest ever fetched for memorabilia tied to the sunken passenger ship.
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Photos: Art and collectibles: Going, going, gone wild
An engraving from Wallace Hartley's fiancee, Maria Robinson, is attached to the Titanic band leader's violin.
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Photos: Art and collectibles: Going, going, gone wild
This 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196 sold at auction for $30 million in England. It was part of a group of race cars that won nine of 12 Forrmula 1 World Championship-qualifying races during 1954 and 1955 and was driven by Juan Manuel Fangio.
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Photos: Art and collectibles: Going, going, gone wild
A 118-carat white diamond is on display at Sotheby's, a New York auction house. The oval stone was auctioned off in Hong Kong for a record $30.6 million.
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Owens won the 100- and 200-meter sprints, the long jump and ran the opening leg for the winning 4x100-meter U.S. relay team.
"It leaves one nearly speechless to behold this medal. It survives as one of the world's most poignant symbols of triumph," the vice president of SCP Auctions, Dan Imler, said in a statement.
No one knows where the other three original medals are, the auction house said.
Owens gave this medal to friend Bill "Bojangles" Robinson a few years after the Olympics, and the late entertainer's widow, Elaine Plaines-Robinson, sold the medal, the auction house said.
Owens never cashed in on his Olympic glory. Instead of earning a living from his extraordinary athleticism, he ended up opening a dry cleaning business and occasionally raced against horses at the behest of promoters.
"People said it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do?" Owens once said, according to an ESPN.com article. "I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals."
Owens eventually made a good living in public relations and as a public speaker. He died in 1980.
