Olympic Medals

[TimberWolf]

I was surprised at the cost of the materials. I was looking at the medals yesterday on the podium, looked up the % silver/gold composition and was thinking even the silver 'looks' a big old lump of metal so must be worth a few bob. Apparently not.

Yeah, I expect it would be surprising. Just running the numbers: Gold is 1.84 times the density of silver so silver will look bigger than gold for the same weight and at 1/57 the price of gold you would get a surprisingly big lump for your buck by comparison. I haven't seen a medal for real, but at 7mm thick and 8.5 cm in diameter it is a big old boy, and when combined with the fact that it's mostly silver, one might still have expected to be lugging around a small fortune, without doing the numbers.

A pure gold medal worth £400 would be tiny, 12.12 grammes, or a 6.3 mm cube. Perhaps that's why they bulk it up with silver even in the gold medal. Imagine the Olympic shot putter holding up a gold medal, with both hands raised in triumph, with it on the end of his finger.

Current pure silver price = £575/kg £575/kg * 0.925 * 0.4 kg = £212.

They would be worth a lot more than the metal price though.

[Durbs]

Silver : 92.5% silver, 7.5% copper. Worth £200

I was surprised at the cost of the materials. I was looking at the medals yesterday on the podium, looked up the % silver/gold composition and was thinking even the silver 'looks' a big old lump of metal so must be worth a few bob. Apparently not.

[northernladuk]

Interesting post. Gonna go read up on that.

[TimberWolf]

4700 medals to be won in 805 victory ceremonies. Overall medal composition:

• 4 kg gold (128.6 troy ounces, worth £133,004 at spot)
• 5,500 kg silver (5,020,175 troy ounces, worth £3,202,459 at spot)
• 2,500 kg copper (worth £12,196 in bulk)

Medal metals:

Weigh 375-400g, 85 mm diameter * 7 mm thick

• Gold : 92.5% silver, 6.16% copper, 1.34% gold (6g, 24k gold gilding). Raw materials worth around £400
• Silver : 92.5% silver, 7.5% copper. Worth £200
• Bronze : 97% copper, 2.5% zinc and 0.5% tin. Worth £2, but every medal is priceless to the athletes

Rules laid down by the International Olympics Committe specify that the medals must contain 550 grams of high-quality silver and 6g of gold, must be at least 3 mm thick and at least 60 mm in diameter. The sport/discipline should be written on each medal.


London 2012 medals are the biggest yet. 400g is the equivalent of having a tin of baked beans hanging round your neck. The London Olympic medals were produced by the Royal Mint headquarters in Llantrisant, South Wales. Each medal is pressed 15 times with 9,000 tonnes of weight. The entire process takes around 10 hours per medal. wtf. At current prices, for the first time, the silver content of the gold medal is worth more than its gold content. The Olympic medal has a design featuring the Greek goddess of victory, Nike on the front, stepping out of the Panathenaic stadium. On the back, the River Thames, under the London 2012 logo, is intersected by shards. [Err, I think you'll find it's Bart and Liza Simpson, the dirty beggars]

BBC News - London 2012: Olympic medals timeline
BBC News - London 2012: Olympic medals locked in Tower
John Bull's Blog: Gold, Silver, Copper, and the Olympic medals in 2012
Composition and cost of 2012 Olympic Medals | MrReid.org
and others