Are Olympic Gold Medals Made of Pure Gold?
The Spanish newspaper "AS" explained in a report that for simple economic reasons, Olympic gold medals are no longer made of pure metal, since the fifth Olympic Games in Stockholm in 1912, when the organizers realized that continuing to do so is very expensive.
Olympic medals in gold
According to gold prices today, the price of an ounce of gold is about 1892 US dollars. 812 gold medals are awarded to winners in all sports at the Olympic Games. Given the price of gold, it would cost about $30,000 to produce a single 500-gram solid gold medal, and the total cost of all gold medals awarded in a game would be over $24 million.
Today's Olympic gold medals consist of 494 grams of silver, plated with about 6 grams of gold. This means that the cost of producing one gold medal would be about $815, based on the current price of silver ($25 per ounce).
The Olympic silver medals awarded to the athletes who finished second, are made of pure silver, without any coating. So a 500g Olympic silver medal costs about $445 to produce in terms of raw materials.
Whereas the Olympic bronze, which is awarded to the third place, like the gold, is plated, and is the cheapest of the three. It consists of 95% copper, 5% zinc or tin. Its production cost does not exceed $4.70 per medal. All Olympic medals must be at least 3 mm thick and at least 60 mm in diameter.
Tokyo Olympics 2020 medals are less expensive
However, at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, all medals produced for the Summer Games and Paralympics will cost less, because the materials used to make them have been recycled through the 2020 Tokyo Medals Project.
Japanese citizens from all over the country were asked to send in small, unused electronic devices such as old cell phones, handheld game consoles or other electronic devices.
These devices contain precious metals that can be recycled. For example, an iPhone contains about 0.034 grams of gold, 0.34 grams of silver, and about 15 grams of copper, which are exactly the type of precious metal needed to produce Olympic medals.
According to Tokyo 2020 organizers, about 5,000 medals were produced using metals obtained from recycled electronic devices between April 2017 and March 2019.
2020 Tokyo Olympics medal design
As part of the project, a competition was opened to submit designs for the 2020 Olympic medals. The competition, which was open to professional designers from all over Japan, attracted more than 400 participants. In line with IOC regulations, the Olympic medal was required to contain 3 basic elements, the Greek god of victory in front of Panathinaikos Stadium, the official name of the games (the 32nd Tokyo Olympic Games 2020) and the Olympic symbol of 5 rings.
