Olympic gold medals contain only 1% gold; would cost $25,000 if pure

The amount of gold in an Olympic gold medal has fallen to 1.34 percent, thanks to gold prices that recently peaked at $1,895 an ounce. At current prices, a pure 400g medal would cost about $25,000 to make, with a total bill of about $50m for the games.

"The last time the Olympic Games handed out solid gold medals was a hundred years ago at the 1912 Summer Games in Stockholm, Sweden," writes gold brokers Dillon Gage. "Gold medals were in fact only gold for eight years. The 1904 Olympics in St. Louis introduced the gold medal as the prize for first place."

The 2012 gold is 92.5 percent silver, 1.34 percent gold, and 6.16 copper, with IOC rules specifying that it must contain 550 grams of high-quality silver and 6 grams of gold. The resulting medallion is worth about $500. For the silver medal, the gold is replaced with more copper, for a $260 bill of materials.

The bronze medal is 97 percent copper, 2.5 percent zinc and 0.5 percent tin. Valued at about $3, you might be able to trade one for a bag of chips in Olympic park if you skip the fish.

⟿ Follow Rob Beschizza on Twitter.

MORE: gold • olympics

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http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Christ, they put that “blowjob lisa” logo on the actual medals. They just went right ahead and did it.
- awjt
  
  plus, the angel’s got a ballsack!
  - esquire
    
    what do you expect? It’s the XXX Olympiad. Anything goes!
- Daneel
  
  All the time it was… we finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it! Oh, damn you! Goddamn you all to hell!
- relawson
  
  I was very afraid to search for “blowjob lisa logo” at work. Turned up the safe search filter before I did, though.
  
  And now I can’t un-see that in the logo, bravo! :)
- http://twitter.com/meepmeepmeep Alex Kim
  
  Also, the lowercase type in “Olympiad London” creates a very displeasing/distracting texture: my eyes keep getting drawn to the “y” and the “i”, while the ascenders of “l”, “d” and “L” seem to be reaching WAY too close to the edge. Awkward as hell. In general, type on a curve and lowercase do not mix very well. Looks amateurish.
- http://www.facebook.com/csismeiro Carlos Sismeiro
  
  Is it just me or does it pop out even more in the medal design?
- penguinchris
  
  Even if the logo wasn’t obviously “blowjob lisa”, I guarantee that nobody would display their medal with that side facing out. I like random lines and geometric compositions but this is monstrously ugly and completely inappropriate for an olympic medal. The front is ugly too, but passable.
awjt

God I’m such an idiot. I mean, I *seriously* thought gold medals were pure gold, or at least 14k. I’m not joking. Since I was 6 years old and knew what a gold medal was, I have ALWAYS thought they are actually gold. I mean how dumb. Of COURSE a gold medal is just colored gold plated base metal or whatever they are. hahaha, I feel like I’ve been told my parents are Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. Joke’s on me, how lame.
- esquire
  
  hey man, I’m with you.
  
  Also, I seriously doubt you could get fish and chips for $3 at the olympics, right? i’m guessing $3 will buy you at most a nice dipping sauce for said chips.
  - http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
    
    Right! I updated the post because you would seriously have to skip the fish.
    - foobar
      
      But then only from McDonalds, because they need that sponsorship money to pay for… the medals?
  - toyg
    
    You guys gotta jump on a train to the north, where you can still get a decent fish&chips for under £ 3. (ok, it’s not $3, but it’s closer than the $15 you’ll pay in London…)
- retepslluerb
  
  I actually didn’t gave it much though, but I guess I would have assumed that it was real gold. But I never really paid attention to those medals and had no idea that they were that big.
  
  Meh. For such an event, it should be real gold. If they can’t afford the size, they could have made them smaller or made the medal into a case that hold a smaller coin of real gold or silver.
- Editz
  
  It would probably be worth more to make the things out of solid chocolate.
- CH
  
  What? Your parents are Santa Claus and the tooth fairy??? Lucky you!!! No… wait! You mean to tell me that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are living together? You are pulling my leg… right? That’s not cool to joke like that!
  - awjt
    
    Easter bunny, too. It’s kinkier than you think!
Gary61

“The bronze medal is worth about $3—good enough to trade for a bag of fish and chips in Olympic park.”
Umm, it’d probably take more medals than that … aren’t they jacking up food and drink prices for their captive audiences?
Chris Bair

Point of clarification though: McDonalds has an exclusive contract with the games for Fries. You CANNOT buy just fries unless you get them from McDonalds. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2172168/London-Olympics-2012-McDonalds-force-Olympics-bosses-ban-restaurants-selling-chips-unless-FISH.html
- Donald Petersen
  
  I’d be much unhappier with that if any other company had the exclusive fries concession. Their french fries are just about the only thing that McDonald’s has always done better than anyone else in the whole wide world.
  
  Although those Ore-Ida crinkle fries you get at Del Taco are pretty damned good, too.
  - penguinchris
    
    Do you honestly like the Del Taco fries? Everybody I know seems to like them but I just don’t get it. They’re fried instead of baked, but they still taste like the frozen fries my mom used to make. I mean they’re not bad, just kind of whatever.
    
    I can’t remember the last time I had McDonald’s fries (probably 3 or 4 years ago) but I can’t say I’m a big fan of those either. In-n-Out takes the cake for traditional fast food fries since they’re fresh and actually taste like potato.
    
    I can imagine as I type my favorite fries and could probably describe them, but I can’t remember where they’re from. I think it must be a non-chain Orange County fast food place but I can’t figure it out; frustrating.
xzzy

Instead of mixing in impurities, a better solution may be to shrink the size of the medal down. I might actually watch if I got to see video of an athlete being adorned with a penny-sized sliver of actual solid gold.
http://twitter.com/chuckmonkey2010 Chuck

Seems kinda cheap of the IOC – they spend $20 billion (more?) of UK taxpayers money, but won’t pay $25K to reward the athletes?
- Glen Able
  
  Well it’s presumably 25K times a few hundred, unless you’re expecting them all to fight over 1 medal (which would be brilliant fun to watch; I would put my money on the boxing champ). But, yeah, your point still stands.
  - perch
    
    That would actually be awesome. Maybe instead of a fight, they could ‘line up’ a bunch of events. You’d have to swim, run some hurdles, bike, row, skate, leap, and whatever else along a huge course. It’d be a mass start of all the gold medalists, winner take all.
    - Glen Able
      
      Well that sounds pretty good, but I think you’re failing to imagine the thrill of an actual deathmatch, using whatever weapons are to hand (javelins spring to mind!)
      - awjt
        
        Yeah, the winner and the loser both get medals. The winner gets the gold-plated shitty one and their LIFE, while the dead one gets a $25k pure gold one, placed around the neck in the open casket. TO THE DEATH!
      - Donald Petersen
        
        And then the biathletes show up from the Winter Games, and it’s all over.
    - jerwin
      
      Are you a fan of Modern Pentathlon?
      - Antinous / Moderator
        
        American Gladiators is better. They try to knock each other off giant mushrooms with oversized Q-tips.
  - DSarge001
    
    boxing? there are shooting events too you know, seems like they would have the lock. Not very sporting though & you would have to use your ammo wisely. Do I waste my bullet on the fencers or just buttstroke them & save it for the judo boys. I like the sound of this! I’m finally getting olympic fever.
  - http://www.facebook.com/csismeiro Carlos Sismeiro
    
    You would put money on the boxing champ over al the guys from shooting events?
- robdobbs
  
  I imagine if it was real gold all the way through, we’d see the athletes selling them when/if they don’t get sponsorships or to pay for the training they already got.
Mister44

FFS, that 2012 logo is hideous. I want to gag every time I see it.
- Daneel
  
  That’s what she said!
- awjt
  
  and the tits are all askew
robdobbs

Why didn’t they just make the metal medal smaller?
- Jorpho
  
  Well, they did put gigantic holes in them in Torino 2006. Remember? They looked like CDs.
http://www.facebook.com/edbeaty Ed Beaty

That thing looks like Two-Face has gotten ahold of it. http://www.amazon.com/Batman-Dark-Knight-Harveys-Replica/dp/B001F7IP8G
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ministry/ Ministry

Valued at about $3, you might be able to trade one for a bag of chips in Olympic park if you skip the fish.

I paid £1.80 ( = $2.83, says Google) less than a hour ago, so good estimating, Rob.

However, that was 400 km from the Olympic Park, in Lancashire….
In May 2011, I noticed a mobile chippy on the South Bank, London, was charging £1 ($1.57) for a single pickled onion.
- http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
  
  Bastards!
http://www.facebook.com/jcubed Jesse James Jensen

They should call the third place medal “Brass”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass
Purplecat

You know, because you mentioned the price of gold in a blog, I’m expecting the usual suspects to turn up any moment now, yelling: “Fraud! Debasement! Audit the IOC! Fractional medal awarding is a Soviet Plot to cause hyperinflation!”
Jorpho

Might as well just go for shiny plastic and be done with it.

Is shiny gold plastic not a wonder of the modern age? Think of how the kings and queens of yore would have been dazzled by this lustrous and lightweight material!
- fuzzyfuzzyfungus
  
  Aluminum would be a strong contender.
  
  Aluminum compounds of various flavors are cheap as chips(being ~8% of the earth’s crust will do that); but the refining technique is tricky enough that it was rarer than unobtanium until quite recently…
http://profile.yahoo.com/SMULLH6RYVKXGYQDLZGGCSK2BE Dr. Jones

Amount of gold in a Nobel Prize >>>>Amount of gold in an Olympic Medal. Nerds win again.
Damien Bailey

This was on an episode of QI a while back. I think they estimated that if the medals were made out of 18ct gold the bill for the medals would be in the region of $1.5m which they thought is a small price compared to the rest of the competition and would be nice to award winners with these medals.
Damien Bailey

At £3000 each btw, not a huge sum, I think most athletes would keep onto them and not sell them.
http://twitter.com/Bashtarle Bashtarle

………. Yeah so, you get all the countries fighting over you. You get them to spend billions, trampling rights where need be…… rake in untold amounts of money in shameless advertising…… and you can’t spend 50million for some gold medals.

Way to stay classy Olympics.

There is probably a reason I haven’t watched them in decades and actively avoid buying products that sponsor them during the time they run (which is like everything).

They certainly don’t convey the sense of coming together or good will they did, at least not to me, not since I was a kid anyhow. They feel more like Valentines day the primary function of which seems to be unloading mass amounts of heart shaped chocolates and tepid greeting cards.

…… and in my book not that it matters, anything where you are judged on style
IS NOT A SPORT!
http://boingboing.net/ The Life Of Bryan

That’s what I love about the Olympics™; everybody wins except the athletes.
timquinn

“The bronze medal is 97 percent copper, 2.5 percent zinc and 0.5 percent tin. Valued at about $3, you might be able to trade one for a bag of chips in Olympic park if you skip the fish”

Yeah, except it’s AN OLYMPIC BRONZE MEDAL. Let’s not let the over commercialization take away from the real accomplishments of these folks.
- timquinn
  
  yeah I shouted, get over it.
Ryan Lenethen

Though on the other side of the coin (pardon pun), the less the medal is worth the less likely an athlete will pawn it for cash. They are a bit less meaningful if their were tons of them floating around in pawn shops. The less it is worth the more likely the athlete will keep it forever as the potential desire will be less.