Until I read bibliophage’s post, I thought that was just what they did! The only one I’ve ever seen in person was a Bronze won by a guy I know at Munich.
Also, isn’t gold a rather soft metal? I don’t think a solid 24K gold medal would be very practical.
Practical for what? Hanging around someone’s neck?
Well, if you dropped your solid gold medal, I think it would dent or warp, but then I’ve only had very limited experience handling sold gold items, so what do I know?
Edited to add that I doubt that cost is the issue, at least not with these games. I heard the Chinese government spent $40 billion.
Cost more, or have a higher raw materials cost? There’s a difference …
Explain the difference.
If you’re making a relatively low number of the medals, your design and manufacturing costs are relatively high per finished item. If you’re making softball trophies that you can sell for decades, you might charge a lower per item profit, meaning you could have a lower finished/retail cost while possibly having a higher cost in raw materials.
The point is not to save money. One point is that they don’t want to temp anyone who wins a medal to melt it down for the money or make them targets for thieves who would melt them down. It’s major worth is as an Olympic gold metal, and as such the true owner will be immediately evident.
I saw on Sportscenter that the value of the metal in the medal was $ 220.
Your beer league softball trophy utilizes $10 worth of aluminum and wood, if it costs $250 to buy, it’s because you have to pay for someone to design it, build it and make a profit selling it to you
Gold medals use $250+ worth of materials, are designed and built with a much higher level of care and artistry, but you don’t see that because nobody is building them in an effort to make a profit.
If the medals come with cash, that is taxable. Question is, do Olympic medals come with cash?
The medal itself isn’t, any more than a university diploma would be taxable.
What? Undergraduate and graduate degrees are BOTH printed on paper? I understand it for an undergrad, but printing a doctorate on paper just makes them look cheap. Shouldn’t they laser-etch it onto, say, a Lamborghini?
He who values the medal (or any other celebration of achievement) on the basis of the raw materials therein entirely misses the point of the award. Hell, if it was about transfer of valuable materials, why not just give the Olympian fifty bucks and tell him/her to go buy themselves something pretty?
I’m sure the Chinese government outsourced the production of the medals to… oh wait, never mind.
My university never billed my diploma as anything other than paper, so that really doesn’t apply.
Tell that to the Olympic Committee, who wants the cachet of the term Gold Medal, when it really isn’t.
And also tell it to the manufacturer of Gold Medal Flour. There’s just white powder in there!
According to CNN Money, US Olympic Committee pays athletes for winning a medal. For example, in 2004 gold medal winners received $25,000.
As far as your second comment, I think it’s the opposite: technically both diplomas and medals are taxable prizes/awards. It’s just that the IRS wouldn’t make you include the fair market value of a diploma in your gross income because it’s de minimus. It would be like making you include the price of a bottle of soda, if you redeemed a winning twist-off cap. It wouldn’t be administratively worth it for the IRS to go after you.
The medal, on the other hand, has a relatively high fair market value. Still, even though technically the medals are taxable, I’m not sure whether the IRS would try to enforce that rule in practice. It wouldn’t be good for PR, and the IRS may lose in court. TaxProf Blog has a nice (but short) entry about Tax Treatment of Olympic Athletes. It mentions another case about an athlete. One of the issues was whether the athlete’s award was taxable. The court sided with the IRS, but said,
Goes with the Olympic ideal - the ancient Greeks competed for a crown of olive leaves.
Which were really laurel leaves painted to resemble olive leaves.
In addition, the national sports federations in several sports also pay bonuses for medals, and Phelps gets some mad phat cash from his sponsors: