What is Prolympo?

 

Prolympo e.V. aims to foster knowledge creation, capitation and transfer of all kind of memorabilia dealing with the Olympic Movement, which should be made available to collectors, researchers and museums. Olympic memorabilia are works of art and therefore have to be regarded as the cultural property of sports. In preserving them and developing knowledge about them Prolympo e.V. makes a significant contribution to secure important aspects of Olympic history for the purpose of education and research.

 

Prolympo e.V. plans to organize conferences, collectors' meetings, fairs and exhibitions. Furthermore, it provides consultancies, evaluations, exchange of loans, documentation of collections, publications and transparency of information. The first priority will be given to the publication of the collectors' catalogues and the collectors' readers as initiated back in 2009.

 

During recent years a small but significant group of Olympic memorabilia collectors has met several times to discuss and adjure the urgent need to formalize their network. On 4th December 2011, the Prolympo e.V. association was founded under the leadership of Karl Lennartz, who, sadly, passed away in 2014. The group met again at 20th November 2014 in Stuttgart making the clear and serious decision to re-organize their association. A new Board of Management was elected.

 

The consolidation of the Prolympo e.V. association marked the culmination of a story that started at the 14th World Olympic Collector's Fair 2009 in Warsaw. Back then the Olympic memorabilia collector Roberto Gesta de Melo pointed out the urgent need for the collecting world to develop objective collectors' catalogues and ideally collectors' readers for a broader public. With the support of the key collectors of Olympic memorabilia it should be possible to define relevant catalogues for the ascertainment of medals, torches, badges, pins, reports etc. A first meeting took place with a dozen collectors in Brazil and the group unanimously agreed that the immense network of knowledge should be compiled in a series of catalogues to be available for everybody interested in Olympic memorabilia. This initiative should ultimately help to identify items, to streamline the market and to hinder the circulation of falsification. For decades, most collectors' markets such as archaeology, art, furniture, vintage cars etc. use catalogues for ascertainment and it is essential in a steadily growing market like Olympic memorabilia to put similar tools in place as soon as possible.