Why Aren't Olympic Gold Medals Made of Pure Gold?

Custom Logo Medal Supplier to share with you: The first time you see an Olympic Games, the second time you hear an Olympic Gold Medal, Silver Medal, or bronze Medal, you automatically assume that since it's called a gold Medal, it must be pure gold. If you think so, you are wrong, but the reality is always cruel, the so-called Olympic gold medal, actually is not pure gold, usually contains very little gold. In Rio this year, for example, a 500g gold medal contains 6 grams of gold, only about 1.2 percent of it.

It turns out that a Sport Medal is not pure gold? Then why is it called a gold medal? The medal tradition started at the first Athens Games in 1896, when only the first two MEDALS were awarded, the first silver and the second bronze. In 1900, the second Olympics was a rectangular metal with no MEDALS for the top three. The first gold medal was awarded in the third St. Louis Olympic Games in the United States. From then until the fifth Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden, the gold MEDALS in the third Consecutive Olympic Games were made of pure gold. The host country was so rich? Also is not.

Mainly at that time, gold prices cheaper, such as gold is pure gold on the Stockholm Olympic Games in 1912, weight is 24 g (although Rio Olympics MEDALS this year weighs 500 g, but only 6 g) of gold content, but the 24 g of pure gold MEDALS, the cost just $16 - and the cost of a gold medal around this year Rio Olympics in a nearly $600.

There were also fewer events, fewer countries, and fewer people participating in the early Games. At the third Olympics, for example, only 89 gold MEDALS were awarded -- compared with 812 in Rio.At the same time, the total number of participants in the third Olympic Games was only 689, including 533 members of the United States national team. With gold prices soaring, coupled with the turnout, medal and a growing number of even medal grew, LaiChunJin MEDALS don don't stay up again, in such cases, the ioc specifies the conditions of the gold medal in 1978: should not be less than 60 mm in diameter, the thickness is not less than 3 mm, gold, silver must use a purity of 92.5% silver as the main material.

Sport Medal

And the gold medal is not less than 6 grams of gold plated. Fortunately, gold MEDALS don't have to be pure gold. Otherwise, at the price of 300 yuan per gram for 24-carat gold, gold MEDALS alone will cost 300 yuan per gram *500g*812 (COINS) = 121.1 million yuan.

The 500g medal is by far the heaviest medal ever won at a Summer Olympics -- as an aside, the previous heaviest medal was the London 2012 medal, which weighed 400g. The medal itself isn't worth much, though, because it's all about the hard work that athletes put into it. Many countries also give extra money to Olympic champions, such as Singapore, which has never won an Olympic gold medal, with a promise of up to $800,000 if a Singaporean wins.

In addition to the bonus, for the commercial value, visibility is also a great help, so the games medal although not pure gold, not valuable, but the significance of athletes can be extraordinary.