One of the most common misconceptions about the Olympic Games revolves around the hundreds of gold medals given out to athletes who win their respective events, with many people believing that these medals are made of solid gold.
The first Olympic Games of the modern era were held in Athens, Greece, in 1896, with the tradition of hanging medals around the necks of athletes who won their events starting just two games later in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904.
Although it is unclear whether medals given out in the early years of the Olympics were made of solid precious metal, the current era of Olympic medals includes a combination of metals.
Rohit Pandey, assistant professor in the Department of Mining and Minerals Engineering at Virginia Tech, said that the medals are really just meant to look gold but are made up of a completely different type of material.
“It turns out that gold medal is pretty much a silver medal with a gold plating on top,” he said, per NBC 5 DFW.
“It’s not common knowledge, but there’s only six grams of gold in a gold medal that weighs about 500 grams or about a pound. It’s not a solid gold piece. The gold medals are about 92.5% silver,” Pandey said.
He explained that this variation in the metals is due to the economics of collecting enough gold to make the more than 300 awards, noting that the cost to provide solid gold medals could exceed $80 million.
“It comes down to economics, and the economics boils down to mining because, at the end of the day, all these metals and minerals come from the ground, and it is just exponentially harder. It is getting exponentially rare in order to find gold in nature. Like in the earth’s crust compared to silver, and it is harder to mine as well,” said Pandey, per NBC 5.
While gold medals will surely hold sentimental value to the athletes who win them, analysis from the Tokyo Olympics held in 2021 discovered that the raw materials used to make the medals brought the price to roughly $790.34 each at the time, according to Swim Swam.
However, gold medals are sometimes sold by former champions, often due to financial struggles, and almost always fetch far more than the roughly $800 price tag when auctioned off.
When auctioned off, gold medals generally sell for between $20,000 and $50,000, with medals from older Olympic Games generally being purchased at much higher prices, per Swim Swam.
Medals from certain games could also fetch a higher price due to certain intricacies incorporated into the awards, which is something Paris Olympics organizers plan to add to gold medals given out in the upcoming games.
Joachim Roncin, head of design at the Paris Games organizing committee, said that the gold medals given out during this year’s games will include a hexagonal piece of iron that was once part of the Eiffel Tower, saying that gold medal winners should have “a piece of history.”
“Having a gold medal is already something incredible. But we wanted to add this French touch, and we thought that the Eiffel Tower would be this cherry on top,” he said, according to NBC 5.
The Olympics will officially kick off with the opening ceremony scheduled for July 26. The games will run for more than two weeks until August 11.
