Muratov's Nobel Medal Fetches Record-Shattering $103.5-M

The Nobel Peace Prize, which was auctioned off by Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov to raise funds for Ukrainian child refugees, sold for $103.5 million on Monday night, smashing the previous record for a Nobel, Bobby Caina Calvan and Andrew Katell reported for the Associated Press (AP).

Photo Insert: Muratov decided to sell off his trophy after previously announcing that he would donate the matching $500,000 cash award to charity.

The buyer's identity could not be confirmed, but the winning bid was made by proxy, according to a spokeswoman for Heritage Auctions, which conducted the sale.

The $103.5 million sale is equivalent to $100 million Swiss francs, implying that the buyer is from abroad.

“I was hoping that there was going to be an enormous amount of solidarity, but I was not expecting this to be such a huge amount,” Muratov said in an interview after the nearly 3-week auction closed on World Refugee Day.

The previous record for the highest price paid for a Nobel Prize medal was $4.76 million in 2014, when James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for co-discovering the structure of DNA in 1962, sold his. Three years later, Heritage Auctions paid $2.27 million to the family of his co-recipient, Francis Crick.

Muratov, who received the gold medal in October 2021, was the editor-in-chief of the independent Russian daily Novaya Gazeta when it closed down in March amid the Kremlin's crackdown on journalists and public opposition following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Muratov decided to sell off his trophy after previously announcing that he would donate the matching $500,000 cash award to charity.

Muratov has stated that the funds will go directly to UNICEF to assist children affected by the Ukrainian war. Just minutes after bidding closed, UNICEF told the auction company it had already received the money.

It is unknown whether Maria Ressa of the Philippines, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Muratov, will auction off her medal as well, with the revenues benefiting millions of destitute children or harassed Filipino journalists.

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