Psst! Wanna buy an Oscar?

By Lacey Rose

updated 12:28 p.m. ET Feb. 28, 2005

NEW YORK - Last night a triumphant Jamie Foxx walked away with the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the late Ray Charles in "Ray." Today the statuette most likely rests on his mantle. But what if someday he wanted to -- or worse, needed to -- sell it. How much could he get?

Exactly one dollar, according to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hosts the annual awards show. Since 1950, the Academy has required Oscar winners to sign an agreement stipulating that neither they -- nor their heirs -- will sell their statuettes without first offering to sell them back to the Academy for a buck. Refuse to sign, and the Academy keeps the statuette. "They're not tchotchkes to be bought off of a shelf," sniffs an Academy spokesman.

But, despite the Academy's disapproval, that is exactly what's happening. Industry experts speculate that 150 Oscars have been sold since the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929 -- half of which are likely gray-market sales involving post-1950 statuettes. And those 8.5-pound golden statuettes are fetching as much as $1.5 million on the open market. Prices are lower for post-1950 Oscars because they can't be sold again as easily, but a big-name Oscar rarely goes for less than $60,000.

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Historically, the Academy has tried to stifle the free market in Oscar sales through blunt legal intimidation. Take the case of Cyrus Todd, the grandson of late producer Michael Todd. In 1989, Cyrus Todd found himself nearly broke, so he reportedly decided to sell his grandfather's 1956 Best Picture Oscar for "Around the World in 80 Days." For help, Todd turned to Malcolm Willits, a movie-memorabilia expert and owner of the Collector's Bookstore in Hollywood, Calif. But a Los Angeles court granted the Academy a temporary restraining order on Willits' auction, just days before it was scheduled to take place. Weeks later, the restraining order was upheld and Willits was issued a permanent injunction.

Yet, according to legal experts, it's not even clear how watertight the Academy's agreement is. "The one-page agreement that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences enters into with the recipients of Oscar awards raises enough tricky questions of property and contract law to pique the interest of property and contract scholars," says Richard A. Epstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago.

Adds Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School, "It may well be a binding contract, but it doesn't say anything about damages. The contract isn't broken until the statuette is, say, sold -- at which point there's not much to be done against the seller, since he or she no longer owns it. The only question would be what damages the Academy could collect--the value it could have itself sold the statue for? The literal value of the statuette, which apparently the Academy can crank out like the Treasury minting dollar bills, minus $1?"

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