The original AEW World Championship was designed by longtime belt maker Dave Millican, who recently appeared on the Talk Is Jericho podcast to discuss his business.
Regarding how much it costs to make the top prize in All Elite Wrestling, it’s in the five-figure range.
“I don’t remember the exact number but you’re five figures into it (Millican said about the price to make the AEW World Championship). You’re $10,000-plus into it because of all the layers and all the stones that were set and the custom artwork and the rust job and the whole bit. It’s a five-figure championship belt.”
Millican noted that he has a business deal with AEW and while AEW owns the belt design, he owns the trademark for the imaging.
“I made a deal with AEW to where they own the designs to what we did for them. Again, this is not a bad relationship, this is not something where I’m not — I’m in touch with them literally today on a business deal. So, people look at it and say, ‘Oh, they don’t wanna use them anymore.’ It’s just internet crap. It’s business, and so we do business, you know? (Millican laughed) And sometimes things make sense and sometimes they don’t and when they don’t, you shrug it off and you shake hands and you go back and you wait for the next deal to come along and that’s just what it is. So, you know, it’s the licensing thing… Correct (I own the trademark for the imaging), and you can go buy a bootleg of most of them on eBay for, I don’t know, 200 bucks, 300 bucks, whatever but, you can also go down, you can go to Cancun and probably get a fake Rolex real quick (he laughed). You can do that but what you can’t do is replace our history and I say ‘ours’, not just mine. It’s not just my history. I’m only part of it.”
H/T to POST Wrestling