For the first time, a gold medal from the original Dream Team is coming to market, as Goldin Auctions revealed Friday it is selling Clyde Drexler's medal from the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
The medal was privately sold by the 10-time NBA All-Star to the consignor. The lot, which includes a letter of authenticity from Drexler dated April 2024, has a starting bid of $250,000, when the auction opens Monday.
Many items have been sold from the "Dream Team," including Michael Jordan's Reebok winner's podium jacket that he famously draped an American flag over to cover the logo ($1.5 million at Sotheby's in June 2023), a Jordan photo-matched jersey ($3 million at Goldin in May 2023) and his athlete ID ($31,200 at Goldin in December 2022), but an original medal has not sold.
"It's definitely a seven-figure piece," Ken Goldin said. "This is, to me, the most well-known and the most important team in any sport of all time."
Drexler, who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame for his overall career in 2004 and as a member of the Dream Team in 2010, was one of five members of the squad — along with Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan, Karl Malone and Chris Mullin — to average double digits in scoring (10.5 ppg.) through the Olympics.
The team, the first U.S. Olympic basketball team to feature professional players, scored more than 100 points in all eight games. The Americans beat Croatia in the final by 32 points, which was the smallest winning margin for them in the Olympics.
The record paid for an Olympic medal is the $1.46 million that billionaire Ron Burkle paid for one of Jesse Owens' four gold medals from the 1936 Olympics, which was auctioned off by SCP in 2013.
Goldin sold a duplicate of Malone's medal in December for nearly $75,000.
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct.com and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectibles market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.