In terms of value strictly from a metallic standpoint, how much are gold, silver and bronze Olympics medals worth?
I’ll try to get some more info for you later, but my understanding is all the medals are made up of silver, with the gold medal being silver plated with gold, the bronze medal being plated with bronze and the silver medal being pure (well, alloyed to some slight degree) silver.
Now, if we just had the weight of the medals and the current price of silver, we’d be 1/3 of the way home. We’d also need to know how much gold and how much bronze was put on the other medals, too.
Right on the gold, not on the bronze. I think the bronze medals are a 90-10 copper-zinc mix.
OK, cmkeller, looks like that is correct. Serves me right for going from memory.
This site has the weights, compositions, and amount of gold plating for the gold medal. One caveat: It is for the 2002 Winter Games, not 2006. I don’t know if things have changed since, but as we can see from the above, assume nothing in answering a GQ!
I found the overall metal prices for the medals awarded at the '04 Athens games here:
Using the metal prices listed for the Athens summer games and the medal compositions listed in LiveOnAPlane’s cite for the '02 winter games, I come up with the following rough figures:
Gold metal - $243.00
Silver medal - $185.00
Bronze medal - $2.00
To translate that to the 2006 winter games we’d have to know specific compositions and metal prices.
Isn’t the medal design always different? I’m thinking of an Olympics several years ago where the medals seemed to be at least half glass/crystal.
Yes, each games has its own medal design. The Turin medals look like “golden donuts.”
Torino toruses, in other words.
I think you’re forgetting to factor in the value of the chocolate inside, Doc.
–Cliffy
Hawking your 2006 Turin Winter Olympics gold medal at the local pawn shop for some quick cash: $243.
Winning it in the first place: Priceless.
Hmm… perhaps this is the missing item from that 1920’s… oh never mind…
While Olympic medals may have an intrinsic value with respect to the metallic value, can Olympic medals be bought and sold like any other commodity?
To be specific, the WINTER Olympics medals have a different design each time. The Summer Olympics medals always look the same, except for details like the date and location.
The half glass/crystal medals were from Albertville 1992, another Winter games.
Ed
They end up in auctions and pawn shops regularly. Some people collect them. A FOAFOAF has a goal of getting one medal from every Games since 1904. He has at least one from most years.
Nah, why do you think the bronze is worth $2.00 instead of 0.75?
Olympic medals are by no means a commodity. They are neither commonly available nor are they fungible. But like friedo says, they are bought and sold and there’s nothing untoward about that (except in that it’s depressing).
–Cliffy
What would it be worth if you retrieved Mohammed Ali’s Gold Medal, which was thrown into the Mississippi river?
And, besides that, how come nobody ever went looking for it?
Just thought I’d ask.
Are they individualized in any way, either with the name of the winner or the event? If I came across a medal in a pawn shop, would I be able to tell (or figure out somehow) that it had been Mark Spitz’s?
That’d be the Ohio River, Bob, I mean, Elbows.