I know most Olympic athletes would disagree that a gold medal is basically the same as a silver medal. Some people call second place “first loser,” after all.
Fast forward to 2070. Picture (hypothetically) Michael F. Phelps IV hard up for cash after a bad bet against the Norwegian cross country team in the Atlanta Winter Games. (The next ice age began in the 2050s.) Picture Freddie, as his friends like to call him, taking grandpa's old London 2012 medals to the pawn shop, expecting to get something like 70% of melt value for the medal grandpa earned in the 100-meter butterfly. Imagine Freddie's disappointment when he finds out that that this “gold” medal, which weighs nearly a troy pound, has only about 6 grams of gold in it.
The gold medal itself is sterling silver, just like the silver medal. From this website:
- Gold medal: 92.5% silver, 1.34% gold (at least 6 grams), remainder copper
- Silver medal: 92.5% silver, 7.5% copper
- Bronze medal: 97.0% copper, 2.5% zinc, 0.5% tin
Six grams of gold currently goes for a little over $300 (at a spot price of about $1,600 per troy ounce). So the gold content of the gold metal makes its melt value about twice that of the silver medal, but nowhere near the $17k that the medal would be worth if it were 90% gold.
This is probably a good thing, though. Grandson Freddie might never see the medals in the first place if they were mostly gold. They might have been stolen before they made their way out of London! 🙂
I didn’t know this about the medals. Still, I bet it is infinitely more rewarding to get the gold. 🙂
First, I love your Michael Phelps IV scenario – made me laugh 🙂 I did read that if you win a gold medal for the USA, you get $25k from the USOC, compared to $15k for a silver and $10k for a bronze.
I’d have to agree with Melissa, it’s probably the fact that you are first place versus second or third rather than the actual medal. But that is interesting because if you get the gold medal you’d have to pay more in taxes than the silver. When in fact the gold and silver medals are essentially the “same”.