This year has featured something that many in the poker world would seemingly find unbelievable, the auctioning of World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelets on sites like eBay.
In January, one of T.J. Cloutier’s bracelets was put up for sale by a Plano pawn shop and sold for $4,006 to the online site Cake Poker, which then returned the bracelet to Cloutier.
This week, the 2008 WSOP Main Event bracelet of the now retired Peter Eastgate was auctioned for UNICEF, fetching an astounding $147,500 from an anonymous bidder on Thanksgiving Day.
Currently ongoing is an auction on eBay for Paul “Eskimo” Clark’s 1999 WSOP bracelet, which he apparently had sold to a third party. At press time, bidding on Clark’s poker trophy had reached $3,850 with almost four days left to go in the auction.
With the recent wave of WSOP bracelet auctions, people might wonder if the phrase “it’s all about the bracelets” really means anything. “Just because we say it’s all about the bracelet doesn’t mean it’s about the physical bracelet,” three-time WSOP bracelet winner Barry Greenstein responded.
“It’s about winning,” Greenstein continued. “However, I am very aware of how many I have won. And I can’t remember how many finishes I’ve had that resulted in higher payouts than my wins. On the other hand, I know of several instances where people made deals to get extra money and let someone else win the bracelet. In every case I know of, the person who took the extra money regretted it later.”
Antonio Esfandiari, who won a WSOP bracelet in 2004, echoed Greenstein’s sentiments: “The bracelet means a lot. Mine is safely kept in my safe and I will never sell it – that’s for sure. However, each person has a different connection with their bracelet… To some people, it might be just a piece of jewelry and to others it might be the most valuable thing they own.”
Poker Stars pro Chad Brown, who has earned over $3 million in his career, believes that each individual places their own priority on how important a WSOP bracelet is. “(The importance of a bracelet) I feel is an individual thing and personal to each person. I would feel like I didn’t accomplish everything in my career if I didn’t win one. With that said, however, even if I had won a WSOP bracelet, it wouldn’t come close to me winning Player of the Year in 2006. For the rest of my life, I can say that in 2006, I performed better than any other player over a calendar year.”
WSOP Circuit champion Matt “All In At 420” Stout said, “I don’t believe that a few players who are broke enough or have little enough respect for the most coveted prize in poker reflect the way that most of the poker community feels about bracelets accurately. Bracelets are still extremely important to most tournament poker players and acquiring one is one of the life goals of many players, myself included.”
UB.com pro Joe Sebok took a similar viewpoint: “The talk isn’t meaningless, but we live in a society where cash is king. We have seen championship rings sold from time to time, so why not bracelets?” A multiple WSOP bracelet winner who asked to remain anonymous agreed: “If some former champions get in a bind – and I am not one of them – I can understand how tempting it might be to sell one.”
One organization that values its trophies is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), which has awarded the top prize in movies, the Academy Award of Merit (otherwise known as the Oscars) since 1927. In 1950, AMPAS introduced a requirement to Oscar winners that, if they wished to sell the statuette they had won, it would first have to be offered back to AMPAS for the price of $1.
If the recipient of the award refuses to agree to this stipulation, then AMPAS keeps the Oscar statuette. In theory, this would prevent the most valued prize in the film industry from being sold on the open market.
When posed with the question of whether Caesars Entertainment, the owners of the WSOP brand, should do something along these lines with bracelets, those polled by Poker News Daily were evenly split. “I suppose it would make sense for Harrah’s to have a program in which they’d buy them back to avoid these public sales,” Stout stated. Sebok agreed: “Sure, why not? Seems like a reasonable thing for the WSOP to do. Protect the brand and the importance of the bracelet.”
Esfandiari, however, thought the idea of Harrah’s maintaining a “buy back” clause was absurd: “Of course not… That is ridiculous. You win your bracelet and you keep it. What you do with it is entirely up to you. You want to sell it, go ahead… It’s your prerogative.”
Nolan Dalla, the Media Director of the WSOP since 2002, agreed with Esfandiari, saying, “The players win the bracelets and they are free to do with them as they please. Out of the approximately 890 gold bracelets that have been awarded over 41 years, the overwhelming majority are cherished possessions.”
Eastgate’s selling of his 2008 Main Event bracelet for the charitable organization UNICEF was generally viewed as acceptable. “Peter Eastgate made a nice charitable gesture and his bracelet is going for a lot more than it would have been sold for if not for the charity,” our anonymous multiple bracelet winner stated.
Stout agreed somewhat: “I do commend Eastgate for donating all of the profits to charity. At least his decision to quit the game and show no respect for the bracelet is going to benefit some people in need.”
Then again, maybe the uproar over three bracelets appearing on an online auction site is much ado about nothing. Dalla succinctly explained, “What’s the total number of gold bracelets sold? Three? Maybe a few more than that? That’s less than 1% of all the WSOP gold bracelets that have been awarded in history. In other words, more than 99% of gold bracelets are in possession of the winners or their families. You ask, ‘Is all the talk about the bracelets meaningless?’ The real question you should be asking is, ‘Why are there not more people selling their gold bracelets?’ The reason is obvious: Because they are such coveted prizes to everyone who plays poker.”
