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How Much Is That Gold Medal Actually Worth?

Gold Medals Contain Very Little Gold

POSTED: 5:30 am MST August 13, 2008
UPDATED: 8:09 am MST August 13, 2008

You work all your life to get there. You stand on the platform. Your national anthem is playing and the eyes on the world are on you. A gold medal hangs around your neck.

Priceless.

Yeah, for the athletes. The rest of us will probably never even see a gold medal and we are all thinking the same thing: I wonder how much I could sell that for on eBay?

Determining the actual value of a gold medal is tricky and the estimated price actually changes from day-to-day.

The best way to start is by pointing out that only a small percentage of a gold medal is actually made of gold.

According to the Olympic Charter, the gold and silver medals must each be made of at least 92.5 percent pure silver and the gold medal must be gilded with at least six grams of gold.

The price of gold changes daily. Assuming there’s six grams of gold in each gold medal at the current prices per troy ounce, the gold in a gold medal today would be worth around $160.

The remainder of the gold medal is made out of silver. The price of silver also fluctuates, but at an average of $14.50 per troy ounce, the remaining silver in the gold medal hovers around $60.

That puts the estimated monetary value at around $220, depending on how the markets are doing on any given day. This year's medals also include Jade for the first time, which could impact the value.

But that measurement is just the monetary side. The rarity of an Olympic gold medal can also give it extreme value.

In 2004, Polish swimmer Otylia Jedrzejczak was so moved by children she met who were battling leukemia that she auctioned off her gold medal from the Athens Olympics for $82,500 and donated the money to a Polish leukemia charity.

The Polish Mint later made her a gold replica of her medal.

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