Physicist Leon Lederman, who shared the 1988 Nobel Prize, auctioned off his medal on Thursday. It’s the 10th Nobel medal to hit the auction block in the past 30 years.
The gold medal went for $765,002, which includes the buyer’s premium. Sam Heller of Nate D. Sanders Auctions told NBC News that this was the fourth-highest price for a Nobel medal in 30 years. The reserve price was $325,000 and there were six bids. However, the winning bid was placed online. No further details about the buyer were made public.
Lederman, 92, is retired and decided to sell the medal since it was only sitting on a shelf, reports The Associated Press. He shared the 1988 Nobel Prize with two others for discovering the muon neutrino subatomic particle. He is better known for his 1993 book The God Particle, which details his research into the Higgs boson.
The title for most expensive Nobel Prize medal at auction is held by James Watson’s 1962 medal for his work on the DNA double helix. It sold to a Russian billionaire in December for $4.8 million.