Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai displays her medal and diploma during the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony at the City Hall in Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 2014. AFP

Want a Nobel Prize? No need to do anything extraordinary. Just bid for it at auction.

This year's Nobel laureates are being announced this week. They will receive a Nobel diploma, a Nobel medal, about $1 million and accolades from around the world. Several medals have been sold at auction. Though prices can be astronomical, there are Nobel Prize bargains to be had.

The Nobel medals for literature, peace, physics, medicine and chemistry are made of 18 carat green gold plated with 24 carat gold and weigh 175 grams. The Nobel medal for economics is made of the same material but weighs 185 grams. The amount of gold would net around $5,500, Agence France-Presse reported. But purchasers are not looking to melt down the medals; they want to own a piece of history.

As with all memorabilia, more name recognition increases the market for a Nobel Prize medal. James Watson may be known better for his controversial statements, but the American scientist won a Nobel for co-discovering the structure of DNA along with Francis Crick. The scientists based their research on data collected by Rosalind Franklin without her permission. She died in 1958 and could not be nominated for the Nobel Prize in medicine given to Watson and Crick in 1962.

Watson's Nobel medal fetched $4.76 million at auction in December 2014. Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov purchased the medal but said he would return the prize to Watson. Crick's estate sold his Nobel medal for $2.27 million in 2013.

Those prices are inflated because the medal belonged to the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA. Leon Lederman, who earned a Nobel Prize for his discovery of the muon neutron, sold his medal for $765,002. Simon Kuznets' Nobel Prize in economics sold for $390,848 at auction. James Chadwick's 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics sold for $329,000. But the estate of American novelist William Faulkner failed to sell his Nobel Prize medal in 2014 after bidding did not reach the $500,000 minimum.

Rare availability can also inflate prices, which is why Nobel Peace Prizes sell for large sums. Carlos Saavedra Lamas, foreign minister of Argentina, sold his Nobel Peace Prize medal for $1.1 million at auction in 2014, Reuters reported. The presale estimates had it at a paltry $100,000. William Randal Cremer's 1903 Nobel Peace Prize medal sold for $17,000 in 1985. Reuters reported only two Nobel Peace Prize medals have been sold at auction, but AFP lists a 1909 Nobel Peace Prize medal that sold for $661,000 and Aristide Briand's Nobel Peace Prize medal selling for $13,650 at auction in 2008.

One Nobel Peace Prize medal that could shatter all records is currently in the middle of a court battle. Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, but his heirs are split on selling the medal. His sons, Martin Luther King III and Dexter Scott King, and daughter, Bernice King, run the estate. The sons voted in favor of selling the medal along with his traveling bible, but Bernice King has refused to sell the items. Former President Jimmy Carter announced Monday that he will help mediate the dispute.