Original Article: St Louis Post-Dispatch
St. Louis silver is lining the pocket of some memorabilia collector, now that a medal from the 1904 Olympics has been bought at auction.
On Thursday, an unidentified buyer submitted the winning bid of $82,499 for a silver medal awarded to U.S. athlete Daniel Frank, who finished second in the running broad jump (now known as the long jump.)
The item was offered by RR Auction of Boston as part of a sale that began in December and included more than 200 other items.
Frank, a New Yorker who died in 1965, won the silver medal with a leap of 22-7.75, more than a foot off the winning leap turned in by Myer Prinstein, also of the U.S.
The field events in the St. Louis Olympics were held at Francis Field on the Washington University campus.
The medal was designed and minted by Dieges & Clust of New York, a firm that cast numerous military and athletic medals, including the original Heisman Trophy.
Among the medal’s adornments are engravings that identify the event and also “1904, Universal Exposition, Olympic Games, St. Louis.”
The item came with a leather case and a scrapbook containing more than 100 newspaper articles about Frank’s athletic exploits.
In June 2018, a gold medal from the St. Louis games sold for $125,000. The medal had once belonged to George Louis Redlein of the Buffalo Germans basketball team.
Basketball was a demonstration sport during the St. Louis games and the medal competition featured just six teams. Two of those squads were from St. Louis: the Missouri Athletic Club and the Central YMCA.
