Nearly 100 items from Dick Button‘s personal collection will go up for auction on Jan. 25-26 via Brunk Auctions. Button won back-to-back Olympic gold medals in 1948 and 1952 before kicking off a broadcasting career that lasted half a century.
Button told International Figure Skating he is planning on selling his New York City apartment, but has to part with some of his belongings first.
“I went to Stockholm for the world championships and Cecile von Mendelsohn-Bartholdy, the wife of [three-time Olympic gold medalist] Gillis Grafström, offered me her entire collection,” Button said, according to the report. “My father said he would buy it for me if I would like it but I said, ‘what would I do with all those things?’ So she gave me one Dutch tile from the 18th century – I now have 31 of them. She also gave me a print and I was so fond of it I started collecting.”
Last year, Button celebrated the 70th anniversary of his first gold medal and live-tweeted his own Olympic commentary during PyeongChang.
Much of the artwork in the collection centers on winter scenes and figure skating, including paintings, figurines, and rugs. But the auction will also include pairs of ice skates and costumes that Button wore and the Olympic Torch he carried in 2002.
“The collection is both highly personal and comprehensive and tells the story of both figure skating and its most important personality,” the Brunk website explained.
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