It only costs around $400 to make each Oscar statue, but for the right movie, the award could transform into a six-figure collectible.
At least, that used to be the case.
Ever since the 1950s, the Academy Awards has forbidden recipients from selling their statues. Instead, winners must first offer it back to the Academy for the sum of $1.
“Award winners shall not sell or otherwise dispose of the Oscar statuette, nor permit it to be sold or disposed of by operation of law, without first offering to sell it to the Academy for the sum of $1.00,” the Oscars website reads. “This provision shall apply also to the heirs and assigns of Academy Award winners who may acquire a statuette by gift or bequest.”
The statues have been made by Polich Tallix Fine Art Foundry since 2016, which hand-casts them in bronze and adds a layer of 24-karat gold.
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Michael Jackson paid $1.54 million to acquire the Best Picture Oscar awarded to producer David O. Selznick for “Gone With the Wind” in 1999, a record price for any Oscar.
Other pre-1950s Oscars have sold in recent years as well, with the most notable being the Best Original Screenplay Oscar awarded to Orson Welles and Herman Mankiewicz for “Citizen Kane,” which sold for $645,000 in 2023.
But the above are exceptions, with courts siding with the Academy in multiple instances in which it challenged the sale of an Oscar, successfully halting it.
The Oscars aren’t the only award whose recipients are forbidden from selling.
The Tony Awards have a similar rule to the Oscars, though they are slightly less cheap. If winners wish to sell their trophy, they must first offer it to Tony Award Productions for $10, just a bit more than the $1 offered for Oscars.
As for Emmys, the Television Academy’s official policies declare it is forbidden to sell or resell the award, even for heirs.
“When the Television Academy honors an artist for an achievement, it lends a copy of the Emmy Award statuette to the qualifying artist honoree. When an honoree dies, the Academy allows for the honoree's heirs to retain possession of a copy of the statuette, in order to symbolize the achievements of the deceased honoree,” the Television Academy’s website reads. “Anyone wishing to part with an Emmy Award statuette should return the statue to the Television Academy. The Academy will then store the statuette in the honoree's memory.”
The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences technically owns all Grammy statues, and, like the rest of the EGOT awards, they are not permitted to be sold.
Even Heisman trophies have a ban in place, first instituted in 1999, though multiple Heisman trophies given out prior to 1999 have been sold for hefty sums, including O.J. Simpson’s 1968 trophy, which fetched $255,000 at auction.
So, while the winners at this year’s Academy Awards will be handed a small statue worth in some cases the same amount as a house, none will be able to cash in — unless they would like to hash it out in court.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct.