SAD, CRAZY AND FUNNY TALES ABOUT SUPER BOWL RINGS

Larry Grantham remembers the first day he saw the ring he received after his New York Jets beat the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. He opened the fancy box and couldn’t believe his eyes. “When you took it out, it was so shiny and pretty and everything, you didn’t want to scar it up, yet you wanted to wear it, a symbol of achievement."

Still, that wasn’t even halfway to the $45,000 the auctioneers expected the ring to fetch. When the auctioneers—Victor Moreno and a woman who goes by one name, Kieta—learned about Grantham’s devotion to Freedom House, they pulled the ring out of the auction, even though they had widely publicized its sale and figured to make a tidy profit on the commission.

Moreno and Kieta are recovering alcoholics who admired Grantham’s work with Freedom House. “It was people like him who helped me when I started on my journey of recovery,” said Kieta, who now acquires sports merchandise for a different company, BidAMI.com, and is engaged to Moreno. “I can’t tell you the people who came out of the woodwork telling me how much Larry helped them.”