How much is an Oscar statuette worth?

How much is an Oscar statuette worth? A more than legitimate question now that the 96th edition of the awards for excellence in the world of cinema has been archived in Los Angeles.
The Oscar is the award that everyone working in the film industry, be it an actor or a director or even a make-up artist, dreams of winning during their career.
In addition to the prestige of the recognition, the Oscar statuette does not have much commercial value.
In this 2024 edition, Italy will be represented by Io Capitano, the film by Matteo Garrone which however failed to win the Oscar for best international film.
Instead, Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer was the one to hoard the statuettes.
Let's see in detail how much winning an Oscar is worth, with the value of the coveted statuette being more symbolic than economic.
How much is the Oscar Award statuette worth Three years before the Film Festival was born in Venice, on 16 May 1929 the Oscar Awards were awarded in Los Angeles for the first time.
In addition to the most prestigious, it is also the oldest award in the world in the film industry.
At the base of everything is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, founded two years earlier, in 1927, again in California to support the film industry.
It is an honorary professional organization and approximately 6,000 industry professionals are members.
They decide the winners of the statuettes, after a long selection of films from all over the world.
But how much is an Oscar statuette worth? First of all, it must be specified that, since 1950, anyone nominated for the award must sign a commitment not to resell the recognition to third parties for payment of money.
If a winner wants to "get rid of" the statuette, he can return it to the Academy who will take it back by paying the nominal price.
It is therefore impossible to find it at any auction and buy it.
In detail, the Oscar Award statuette is 35 centimeters high and weighs 4 kilos.
As you can imagine, it is not made of solid gold but of an alloy of metals, subsequently plated with 24 karat gold together with nickel and silver.
For this reason, its commercial value is not as exorbitant as one might believe: 295 dollars, almost like any ornamental object that you can find in a costume jewelery shop.
Before the changes dictated by the pandemic, the other figures that revolved around the Oscar evening were very different: if its organization was estimated to have a total cost of 44 million dollars, the turnover for the city of Los Angels was calculated at 130 million dollars.