Olympic gold medals from this year’s Paris Games are more valuable than ever, with the ingredients for each medal likely to cost about $900.
The medals contain 6 grams of gold, whose prices surged to record levels in mid-July on central bank buying, Chinese retail interest and expectations of looser monetary policy in the United States. The price of silver has also risen significantly this year, with silver accounting for at least 92.5% of the weight of gold medals.
Even after adjusting for inflation, medal values are still the highest they’ve ever been, with Olympians benefiting from sharp increases in gold bar prices and increasingly lucrative medals.
Olympians actually don’t tend to melt down or sell their medals, and this year’s medals also include a small piece of the Eiffel Tower. Even more lucrative were the gifts countries gave to winning athletes, which included cash, exemptions from military service and dairy cows. Carlos Yulo, who last week became the Philippines’ first male gold medalist, will enjoy a fully furnished apartment and free colonoscopies for life.
Medals for sale may be worth far more than their metal value. A gold medal that Jesse Owens won in Berlin in 1936 — when he rebuked Adolf Hitler for trying to demonstrate Aryan racial supremacy — sold at auction in 2013 for nearly $1.5 million.
