April 21, 2006

Super Bowl I Ring Found 20 Years Later

Twenty years later Packers great Jerry Kramer found his Super Bowl I ring.

To Jerry Kramer, his original Super Bowl I ring isn’t everything. It’s the only thing, or at least, the only one of its kind.

“Its greatest significance is that it was Super Bowl I,” he said Friday in a telephone interview from his home in Boise, Idaho. “You can get excited about Super Bowl XV or Super Bowl XXV or Super Bowl XXXV, but there’s nothing like the first one.”

That is why Kramer was deeply saddened when the ring was stolen more than 20 years ago, and why he was outraged Friday to discover it up for sale on a Chicago-based auction house’s Web site.

It’s also why he was thrilled when Mastro Auctions, who opened the bidding at $5,000, promptly removed the ring from its site after being contacted by Kramer.

“It’s a fantastic piece,” said Doug Allen, president of Mastro Auctions. “The bidding was at $20,000 when we withdrew it, and I’m sure it would’ve gotten crazy tonight but we wouldn’t let it get to that point.”

Mastro Auctions, the largest sports auction house in the world, according to Allen, is going to work through the consigner to authenticate the ring and try to return it to Kramer.

It was stolen from an airplane restroom in the early 1980s. Kramer heard nothing about it until he got an annonymous call from Canada last week.

"Kramer’s Stolen Super Bowl Ring Shows Up on Internet"