The history of the Nobel auction
The Nobel sold for the least money at auction was the prize of the Frenchman Aristide Briand, distinguished in 1926 for his role in the short-lived reconciliation between France and Germany.
In 2008 it was acquired by a museum and seven years later it was stolen by unknown persons.
The medal awarded to Britain’s William Randal Cremer in 1903 narrowly exceeded this price, awarded for $17,000 in 1985.
For some years now, the appetite for these awards began to increase.
In the last decade, several prizes in Physics, Chemistry or Economics have reached prices of between 300,000 and 400,000 dollars.
Among the medals for the Nobel Peace Prize, that of the Belgian Auguste Beernaert distinguished in 1909 reached 661,000 dollars and the prize awarded to the Argentine Argentin Carlos Saavedra Lamas in 1936 reached 1.16 million dollars.
Until now, it was the medicine prize that held the record when the American James Watson, one of the scientists who discovered the structure of DNA, raised 4.76 million dollars in 2014.
On the other hand, sometimes the expectations of an auction are not met.
The medal awarded to the American writer William Faulkner, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949, was withdrawn from an auction after he failed to raise the half million dollars that his heirs expected by putting the piece up for sale in 2013.