But it was a first-place silver medal from the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896 — there were no gold medals then — that commanded six figures on the eve of this year’s Games.
Bill Russell, the Boston Celtics legend, will put his gold medal from the 1956 Olympics, when he served as captain of the U.S.
“I’ve decided to sell most of my collection,” Mr. Russell said in a video on the website of Hunt Auctions, the Exton, Pa., auction house that will handle the sale of his medal, some of his N.B.A.
A gold medal won by an unidentified member of the 1984 U.S.
It was a handsome sum, but a mere fraction of the nearly $1.5 million that a collector paid in 2019 for one of the four gold medals that were won by Jesse Owens at the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin.
The silver medals awarded at the Tokyo Games are made from pure silver and weigh 550 grams, which works out to about $450, according to Mr. Newman, who said that bronze medals would be worth significantly less.