Winning an Olympic gold medal can be priceless for athletes
competing on the world's biggest stage, but the medal's actual cost might
surprise you.
First off, the 556-gram medal costs less than you think
because it isn't entirely made of gold and hasn't been for more than a century.
According to Olympic records, the only time gold medals were purely made ofgold was during the St. Louis games in 1904 and the London games in 1908.
Turns out only six grams are comprised of gold plating with
the rest being made up of pure silver, meaning about only one percent of the
medal is actually made up of the material it is named after.
As of July 29, gold was priced at $1,831 per ounce and
silver was priced at $25.78 per ounce, according to Markets Insider and
Monex.com. Under that calculation, an Olympic gold medal is approximately worth
a whopping $810.
That means, right now, your MacBook Pro, the cheapest Rolex
and a flight to Tokyo costs more than the top prize handed out at the Olympics.
A silver medal in shooting from the 1900 Olympics in Paris
recently sold for a mere $1,283.
Then there was a bronze medal from the 1956 Winter Games in
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, that fetched $3,750.
But it was a first-place silver medal from the first modern
Olympics in Athens in 1896 — there were no gold medals then — that commanded
six figures on the eve of this year’s Games. It sold for $180,111, according to
RR Auction, the Boston-based auction house that handled all three sales.
Even though their sentimental value may be priceless to the
athletes who wear them around their necks, Olympic medals are finding their way
to pawn shops and auction blocks from the podium, where collectors are scooping
them up like rare coins, comic books and other sports artifacts like baseball
cards.
“It’s a niche collectible,” Bobby Livingston, an executive vice
president of RR Auction, which brokered the sale of the three medals and 18
others on July 22, said on Sunday. “The ones that have come to market in recent
years, there isn’t a glut of them.”
One doesn’t have to be Caeleb Dressel, the American swimmer
who won five gold medals in Tokyo, to collect medals.
Dozens of former Olympians have resorted to selling their
medals over the years. Some have cited financial hardships, while others have
said that they were motivated by raising money for charity.
Bill Russell, the Boston Celtics legend, will put his gold
medal from the 1956 Olympics, when he served as captain of the U.S. basketball
team, on the auction block this fall.
“I’ve decided to sell most of my collection,” Mr. Russell
said in a video on the website of Hunt Auctions, the Exton, Pa., auction house
that will handle the sale of his medal, some of his N.B.A. championship rings,
a warm-up jacket and other memorabilia.
Mr. Russell says that some of the proceeds will go to
MENTOR, a charity that he co-founded that promotes youth mentorship
opportunities. A donation will also be made to a social justice initiative created
by the Celtics.
While the names of Olympians are not engraved on medals,
names matter, and so do the circumstances associated with athletic feats,
auction experts said.
A gold medal won by an unidentified member of the 1984 U.S.
basketball team, a roster that included Patrick Ewing and Chris Mullin, sold
for $83,188 on July 22, RR Auction said.
It was a handsome sum, but a mere fraction of the nearly
$1.5 million that a collector paid in 2019 for one of the four gold medals that
were won by Jesse Owens at the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin. The sale price set
a record for a piece of Olympic memorabilia, according to SCP Auctions, the
Laguna Niguel, Calif., auction house that handled the sale.
Owens, the Black American track and field athlete, delivered
a dominant performance at those games as Hitler watched.
In addition to the origin and ownership history of
collectibles like medals, known as provenance, their condition plays an
important role in their price, auction experts said. Do they have their
original ribbon? Did they come with a case?
Not all Olympic medals are engraved with the name of the
sport for which they were awarded, which auctioneers say can reduce their value
if it is unclear.
In Tokyo, the gold medals won by the athletes overwhelmingly
contain more silver than actual gold, which makes up about 6 grams of the total
weight of 556 grams, according to the International Olympic Committee.
That works out to be about $800 in gold and silver in those
medals, Philip Newman, a founding partner and managing director of Metals
Focus, a London-based research firm, said on Sunday.
“If you’re winning, I think the value is probably
irrelevant,” Mr. Newman said. “I’d be surprised if anyone thought they were
pure gold.”
The silver medals awarded at the Tokyo Games are made from
pure silver and weigh 550 grams, which works out to about $450, according to
Mr. Newman, who said that bronze medals would be worth significantly less. They
contain red brass, which is 95 percent copper and 5 percent zinc.
Each medal comes with a wood case and features the five
Olympic rings, the official name of the games and Nike, the Greek goddess of
victory, on them, a requirement of the I.O.C.
Some collectors will gladly settle for bronze, Mr.
Livingston said.
“They’re still Olympic medals,” he said. “Third place is
still pretty darned good. As a collector, you can start with bronze if you
don’t have a lot of money.”
So, then how do Olympians get paid?
According to the U.S. Olympic Committee, the big bucks come
from the "Operation Gold" rewards which are payments to athletes that
medal at the games.
The medals at the Tokyo Olympics are also unique in the
sense that they're comprised of medals collected from small electronic devices.
The city put the call out to the public and received around 78,985 tons of used
devices to help create 5,000 medals.
"Every single medal to be awarded to athletes during
the Tokyo 2020 Games is made from recycled metals," the Tokyo Medal
Project's website reads.