Would YOU Sell A Marathon Medal? 

We were browsing vintage running clothing the other day (there’s some really cool stuff on Ebay and Vinted, you know!), when we saw a medal for sale from the 2024 London Marathon.

We searched and there were several other medals from this year’s race, most selling for between £30 and £150. Our initial reaction was: why would anyone sell their medal? And who would want to buy one? So we thought we’d look into it to find out more, and we contacted some of the sellers.

One seller had listed a medal and an official finisher t-shirt, and they told us they were selling them to top up their charity fundraising for the marathon.

Another seller had been a volunteer and was gifted a medal. They didn’t feel the need to keep it, so they put it on Ebay. 

Some runners, especially prolific marathoners, don’t collect their medals. One mentioned how they used to get rid of their medals until they realised they had a value to other people, so they sold them instead. 

But why would anyone want buy a medal?

One runner who finished the 2024 London Marathon wanted a second medal so that they could frame one and put it on the wall to celebrate their achievement.

Another runner had gifted their medal to a child after the race, but then decided they wanted to have a medal for themselves, so bought one from Ebay. 

We heard how there were runners who had lost or damaged their medals, so they wanted to get a new one as a replacement.

And some people like to collect the medals for a big race like the London Marathon, even if they didn’t run the race. 

As we searched more, we found lots of vintage race medals up for auction. Medals from as early as the 1982 London Marathon (that’s a very nice looking medal!), and lots of others from the 1980s and 1990s. You can understand the appeal of collecting them, whether you ran the race or not, and we could imagine them hanging around our office or studio, and seeing them in running stores. 

As we went further down a rabbit hole of reading about race memorabilia we found forums on the topic of selling medals, which then led to discussions about how some runners don’t care to keep the medals but always keep their race bib.

For those runners, the bib represents a unique numbered item which they ran with from the start of the race through to the finish, so the bib was literally with them for the race, and that means more to them than a medal they collected after completing the run. And who hasn’t got really old race t-shirts in their drawer at home?

Some runners treasure their medals and race items, and keep them as a reminder of their accomplishments. But to other runners these are just unwanted clutter. 

Would YOU sell a marathon medal? Or would you see a reason to buy one? Do you keep all your medals, race bibs and t-shirts?