What is the value of a olympic gold medal.?

Question

What is the value of a olympic gold medal.?

Answer 1

If you actually earned it and it was not just given to you? There is no price to be put on it (PRICELESS). Or al least it should be! If you didn't really earn it then I guess you could find some way to put a price tag on it.

Answer 2

Olympic silver medals are made of solid silver, but gold medals are made of silver gilded with at least 6 grams of gold. If we look strictly at the current market prices of precious metals — $19.75 per gram for gold, $0.35 per gram for silver — the minimum value of an Olympic medal would be about $144 for gold and $28 for silver. [All prices in U.S. dollars.] Bronze is presumably worth about as much as a pencil sharpener. This assumes a medal of minimum size based on IOC specifications — 60 mm in diameter and 3 mm thick, weighing about 80g. The Torino doughnuts were much larger than that.

Commodity pricing doesn't reveal the true market value of an Olympic medal, of course. That's a matter of supply and demand. The supply is very limited (but medals are occasionally for sale) and the demand depends largely on who owned the medal in the first place. Michael Jordan's 1992 gold medal for basketball would certainly fetch more on the market than Arkadiusz Skrzypaszek's 1992 gold medal for modern pentathlon. It's difficult to estimate an actual price.

Polish swimmer Otylia Jedrzejczak famously sold her 200-m butterfly gold medal from the 2004 Olympics. Prior to the Sydney games, according to TIME Europe:

[Jedrzejczak] read a novella by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt called Oscar and the Lady in Pink, about a 10-year-old boy dying of leukemia, who, encouraged by a hospital volunteer, writes letters to God about his experiences. The tale inspired Jedrzejczak. "Before my first start, I told my friends, If I win [a gold medal], I'll sell it for the children."

She was true to her word, putting the medal up for auction in December 2004. It sold for more than $82,000. This was admittedly a special case, and surely the winning bidder, a Polish food company, was at least as interested in donating to charity (and the accompanying publicity) as it was in purchasing a souvenir. If Jedrzejczak had been selling her medal with a "Why lie? Need money for booze" sign, I'm sure it would have sold for much, much less.

I took a look on eBay and found two medals for sale, both shipping from Romania. The "Buy It Now" prices were $2,800 for the Montreal 1976 silver medal in canoe, and $1,999 for the Cortina 1956 bronze medal (unspecified sport). That's perhaps a more realistic estimate of the "street value" of Olympic medals.

Sources: Blueprint for Financial Prosperity, My Way (Reuters), Wikipedia: Otylia Jedrzejczak, TIME Europe

Enjoy!

Answer 3

Who would be the moron who sells his/her Olympic gold medal...LOL

Answer 4

I just read something that says the medal is actually silver COATED in gold. It amounts to around $300 U.S. retail value.

Answer 5

I think it is only plated in gold. Not the whole thing is gold. Maybe Jade or something for China.  

Answer 6

Actually one4one, NBC mentioned one of the female european athletes, I believe it was in swimming, sold her gold medal and was able to raise $80,000 for a children's hospital.