An Oscar statue is maybe essentially the most coveted award an actor can maintain. Usually, nevertheless, the Pure gold-plated determine yields not more than a greenback — if a winner tries to resell it on the open market. Forward of the 2024 Academy Awards on Sunday, here is a have a look at the strict rule behind Oscar’s strikingly low resale price.  

How a lot is an Oscar price?

In brief $1. That is as a result of anybody who wins an Oscar should signal an settlement and cling to a no-resale rule put into place in 1951 by the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences, the skilled honorary group that hosts the Oscar Awards. The rule states that nobody can resell their Oscar until the Academy itself refuses to purchase it first — for a greenback.

Why is an Oscar price so little?

“Award winners shall not promote or in any other case get rid of the Oscar statuette, nor allow it to be offered or disposed of by operation of regulation, with out first providing to promote it to the Academy for the sum of $1.00,” the Academy’s rule web site states. “This provision shall apply additionally to the heirs and assigns of Academy Award winners who might purchase a statuette by present or bequest.”

The Academy didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark by CBS MoneyWatch on why the rule was put into place. 

Nonetheless, makes an attempt to attempt to promote an Oscar with out first alerting the Academy have usually led to courthouse showdowns. 

The Academy in 2007 sued to cease the resale of two Oscars received by silent movie star Mary Pickford. A California choose sided with the Academy in a 2008 ruling. 

Six years later in 2014, Joseph Tutalo auctioned an Oscar that his uncle, Joseph Wright, received in 1943 for finest colour artwork course for the movie “My Gal Sal.” The statue was offered for a successful bid of $79,200, Reuters reported on the time. The Academy sued Tutalo and the public sale home that made the sale for breach of contract in 2015. As soon as once more, a California choose dominated in favor of the Academy, forcing the public sale’s winner to return the statue.

However there have been cases the place Oscar-statue seekers have been in a position to purchase a person’s award with none authorized problem from the Academy. Listed here are just a few examples:

• Michael Jackson purchased the Greatest Image Oscar awarded to producer David Selznick in 1939 for “Gone with the Wind.” The King of Pop paid a hefty $1.5 million for it in 1999. 
• Beatrice Welles, the youngest daughter of Orson Welles, offered the Greatest Authentic Screenplay Oscar her father received in 1942 for “Citizen Kane,” for $862,000 in 2011, a quarter-century after his dying. The 1941 film, which Welles additionally directed and starred in, is taken into account the best movie of all time by cinephiles. Beatrice first tried to promote the prized statue at a Christie’s public sale in 2003, however was blocked by the Academy. In 2004 a U.S. District Court docket choose granted her the proper to promote the award, marking the primary time the Academy had misplaced a case towards an Oscar resale, reported Selection.
• Director Steven Spielberg paid $607,500 for Clark Gable’s Greatest Actor Oscar for “It Occurred One Evening.” The Oscar-winning director additionally paid $758,000 for 2 Oscars received by Bette Davis, the Los Angeles Occasions reported.
• Magician David Copperfield paid $231,500 in 2003 for the 1943 Greatest Director Oscar awarded director Michael Curtiz for “Casablanca.” He resold it at public sale in 2012 for barely over $2 million {dollars}.

The 2024 Academy Awards shall be offered on Sunday, March 10, at 7 p.m. ET and 4 p.m. PT.