Bill Russells Olympic gold medal auctioned for $587,500 – Home of the Olympic Channel

Basketball legend Bill Russells gold medal from the 1956 Olympics sold for $587,500 as part of an auction of hundreds of his personal memorabilia items that ended Friday.

Russell, then 22, scored a team-leading 14.1 points per game as the U.S. won all eight games in Melbourne by an average 53.5 points per game.

Russell could have skipped the Melbourne Olympics, which were held during the NBA season in November and December, but instead delayed the start of his Boston Celtics career.

Ever since I was a kid, there were social and physical icons that I always heard about. And you think of these things in awe. And when I got to the age where I qualified for the Olympics, I wanted to go, Russell said, according to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum. Then, the honor of The Olympics was to compete. Not to win, but to compete. I really wanted that. If I hadnt made that Olympic basketball team, I was going to participate in the high jump. I was ranked second in the country in the high jump [Editors Note: Track and Field News ranked Russell third in the U.S. and seventh in the world in 1956], so either way, I was going to Melbourne. I wanted to be a part of that Olympic experience.

The record price for an Olympic gold medal was set in 2013, when one of Jesse Owens four golds from the 1936 Berlin Games went for $1,466,574.

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Bill Russells Olympic gold medal auctioned for $587,500 - Home of the Olympic Channel