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1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics Torch & Two Prototypes....
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Description
Direct from an employee of the company tasked with creation
1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics Torch & Two Prototypes. The sleepy upstate New York town became a household name in 1980 when a rag-tag crew of college hockey players shocked the Soviet Union and the world in the sport's greatest underdog victory, a contest immortalized under the term, "The Miracle on Ice." Heritage Auctions has been honored to present game worn gear and Gold Medals from several members of that heroic squad in past Platinum Night events, commanding no fewer than a half-dozen six-figure prices, hard data that only begins to express the reverence that glorious achievement continues to hold within the American collecting public.Here we present a truly intriguing lot that a certain brand of Olympic collectors will find even more appealing. Those hobbyists attempting to build complete runs of Olympic torches consider the 1980 Lake Placid model to be one of the most unyielding obstacles, as just 140 were created for the flame relay. Only a tiny handful of this original population has since surfaced in the collecting hobby.
This thrilling trio of torches represents the stages of evolution that resulted in the rare final version, retained by a worker at the "Turner Corporation," the largest manufacturer of propane in the world and the company tasked with the creation of the Lake Placid Torch. Several intriguing newspaper clippings are included with the lot, explaining that the design was based upon the torch held by the Statue of Liberty, and that testing involved driving a car seventy miles per hour with the torch held outside the window.
You'll note that the general design is consistent throughout, with deviations in length, metal color, diameter of the mouth of the torches, and the style of the leather grips. The torch with the spiral grip format is the finished product, a style that commanded $40,000 alone the last time it appeared within a major collectibles auction. Each exhibits a small degree of handling and storage wear, but all present nicely. We're confident that this is the only offering of early prototypes in major auction history.
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