Famous Sydney Harbour Bridge Olympic Rings Up for Sale on EBay (Again)

The iconic 35-ton set of steel Olympic Rings that adorned the Sydney Bridge during the 2000 Olympic Games are being listed for sale on EBay. They have been put up for auction before, most recently in 2015, and have a current starting bid of $14,999.00

Condition: Used

Storage: Available

Local pickup only.

While the number of Olympic Rings paraphernalia produced for each Olympic Games is on scale of “millions,” not all rings are created equally. These particular rings, which were attached to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, were among the most-photographed and recorded images of the Games, and rank among the most iconic sets of Olympic Rings in the history of the event.

The rings are 75 meters wide, 35 meters high, and are 35 tons of steel. At current market rates for scrap steel of about $116/ton, that means the rings are worth at least $4,100 US dollars.

But the current seller of the rings is hoping that nostalgia will at least triple that value to an interested seller. That’s still a steep discount on the $750,000-$1,000,000 they cost to build originally.

The rings are “not fully functional,” though no specifics on what that means were given – likely that they don’t light up the way they did during the Games.

There last sale was for $21,100 Australian dollars in 2015, which is about $16,700 in today’s US Dollars. At the time, the seller Bernard Maas said that a “fellow from Pyrmont in Sydney bought them.”

It later was revealed that they were purchased by electrician Tony Stavropoulos. He said earlier this year that he was hoping to get between 50,000 and 100,000 Australian dollars for the rings, which converts to $36,500 and $73,000 in US dollars.

After struggling to find a bidder in a private sale, hoping that they might go up in one of two new stadiums being built in Sydney, Stavropoulos has turned to the place he originally bought them: EBay.

The sale includes the architectural ring plans.