Nobel Prizes cannot be transferred, but that hasn’t stopped many recipients or their family members from donating, selling, or—in some cases—attempting and failing to sell their medals over the years.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado became the latest winner of the prestigious award to join that list on Thursday, presenting her medal to President Donald Trump during their White House meeting shortly after U.S. forces took action against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Machado told Fox News she gave the medal to Trump—who has long desired the Peace Prize and openly campaigned for it before it was awarded to the Venezuelan opposition leader in December—because “he deserves it.”

“I decided to present the Nobel Peace Prize medal on behalf of the people of Venezuela,” she said.

The move has drawn criticism from some figures in Norway, where the prize is awarded. The Nobel Committee itself clarified that “the Nobel Prize and the laureate are inseparable.”

“Regardless of what happens to the medal, diploma, or prize money, the original laureate is and will always remain the one recorded in history as the prize recipient,” the Nobel Committee stated in a timely Friday press release. “Even if the medal or diploma later falls into someone else’s hands, this does not change who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Here are other notable Nobel Prize recipients who chose not to keep their medals—and what they did (or tried to do) with them.

Dmitry Muratov (Peace)

The Russian journalist won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for advocating for press freedom and standing up to Russian authorities.

He auctioned his medal the next year for $103.5 million, donating the proceeds to UNICEF’s fund for Ukrainian refugee children. This is the highest price ever paid for a Nobel Prize medal.

Kofi Annan (Peace)

The former UN Secretary-General shared the 2001 Peace Prize. The Nobel Foundation honored him for prioritizing human rights, “his commitment to curbing HIV’s spread in Africa, and his public opposition to international terrorism.”

After Annan’s death in 2018, his widow Nane Annan donated his medal to the UN’s Geneva office in 2024, saying she wanted his legacy to continue inspiring future generations. The medal remains on permanent display there.

Christian Lous Lange (Peace)

Lange, Norway’s first Nobel Peace Prize laureate, received the 1921 award alongside Swedish politician Hjalmar Branting for “their lifelong contributions to peace and organized internationalism,” per the committee.

Both Lange and Branting “aimed to strengthen the new League of Nations,” the Nobel Foundation notes. Branting was Sweden’s Prime Minister when they won, while Lange became secretary-general of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (an international group of national parliaments) in 1909 and led it through World War I. He later joined the Nobel Committee in 1934.

The Lange family has loaned the medal to Oslo’s Nobel Peace Center since 2005. It is the only original Peace Prize permanently on public display in Norway.

Carlos Saavedra Lamas (Peace)

The Argentine foreign minister won the 1936 Peace Prize for helping end the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay. His medal was auctioned for $1.1 million to a private Asian buyer by the estate of a New York collector who owned it for roughly a decade.

James Watson and Francis Crick (Medicine)

Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins won the 1962 Medicine Prize for discovering DNA’s double-helix structure in 1953—a breakthrough that revolutionized molecular biology.

Crick’s medal (he died in 2004) was sold by his heirs in 2013 for $2 million to Shanghai biotech executive Jack Wang.

Watson sold his medal the next year for $4.76 million to Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who later returned it to him. Watson passed away last November 6.

William Faulkner (Literature)

The author—known for modernist Southern Gothic classics like The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying—won the 1949 Literature Prize for “his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel,” per the committee. His medal was auctioned in 2016 but failed to sell; bidding stopped at $425,000, below the reserve price.

Knut Hamsun (Literature)

The location of Hamsun’s medal is unknown. The 1920 Literature Prize winner—a Norwegian writer honored for his 1917 novel Growth of the Soil (a story of a man settling and farming in rural Norway, called a “monumental work” by the committee)—sold his medal to Nazi Germany’s Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in 1943 as a thank-you after meeting him.

Leon Lederman (Physics)

Lederman, co-winner of the 1988 Physics Prize for discovering a second type of neutrino, sold his medal in 2015 for $765,002 to cover dementia treatment costs.

David Thouless (Physics)

Thouless won the 2016 Physics Prize with two other British scientists for using topology (a math branch) to explain phase changes in matter. His family donated his medal to Trinity Hall at the University of Cambridge, where it is displayed for students.