NEW YORK – When three gold medals said to be Newsday’s own Pulitzer Prizes were auctioned off, it was news to the newspaper.

Newspaper officials thought the awards for public service in 1954, 1970 and 1974 were locked away. But they apparently were sold at an auction Friday in California for $7,000, $4,500 and $4,000, respectively.

The key to a lockbox within the safe where the medals were supposed to be had been lost, so officials called in a locksmith Tuesday to drill into the smaller box. Not only were the medals missing, but so was a silicone mold used to make reproductions of the awards, the paper said.

Newspaper officials are asking former executives for information about the medals.

“We have contacted the police and we are talking to our attorneys to pursue all legal avenues available to us,” Newsday spokeswoman Deidra Parrish Williams said in a statement. “We are naturally disheartened and disappointed to discover that our medals are not in our possession. We are consoled by the fact that the medals are not the prize itself.”

It’s not exactly clear how the medals ended up being sold at the auction. It’s also not known whether the items that sold at auction were reproductions.

From an Associated Press report