And the Oscar goes to ... you?
LOSANGELES —’Tis thes eason when many stars are preparing for monthslong campaigns with the distant hope of bringing home an Academy Award come February.
But winning isn’t the only way to snag one of the coveted statuettes. Enthusiastic collectors with several hundred thousand to spare can achieve Oscar glory at the right auction house.
The latest prize to go under the hammer is James Cagney’s 1942 best actor Oscar for his role in Yankee Doodle Dandy. Auctioneer Nate D. Sanders has required an $800,000 minimum bid for the trophy, which they predict could sell for upward of $1 million by the time the auction closed Thursday night.
“It’s the most prestigious Oscar to hit the market in recent years,” says Sam Heller, a representative of Nate D. Sanders. For one, he notes, there hasn’t been a best actor Oscar available in two decades.
The scarcity of Oscars for purchase isn’t an accident. Historically, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has not looked kindly on the free market sale of the prize.
In an effort to combat the sale of awards by winners or their estates, the motion picture academy instituted a rule in 1951 that requires those seeking to sell their Oscars to first offer it to the academy to purchase for $1. That means that any award won before 1951 is, for the most part, fair game.
The types of collectors who purchase Oscars vary wildly. The late Michael Jackson famously acquired David O. Selznick’s Gone With the Wind Oscar for a record-breaking $1.5 million. Even Steven Spielberg bought acting Oscars for Bette Davis’s Jezebel performance and Clark Gable’s role in It Happened One Night. Spielberg has since donated both back to the academy.