How much is a Paris Olympic gold medal worth?

FE Team | Published: August 01, 2024 00:56:55

The object weighs 529 grams, but only six grams are gold - around 1.3 per cent of the total medal's total weight - while the rest is pure silver. The gold part consists only of a plate laid over the silver core.
Up until the 1912 Stockholm Games, gold medals were made almost entirely of gold. But post-World War I money-saving policies meant that from Antwerp 1920, the amount of gold making up the medals dropped, report agencies.
The silver medal, however, is still entirely made of silver, while the bronze one is a mixture of copper, tin and zinc alloy.
Oxford Economics puts the value of Paris Olympics gold medals at $1,027.
Oxford Economics recently put out value estimates for the three types of Paris Olympic medals that it said were "based on publicly available information regarding their composition and proprietary commodity forecasts" from the firm.
Looking at the metals (mostly silver) used to make the gold medals, one of the top Olympic awards is worth an estimated $1,027 for the Paris Olympics, according to Oxford Economics.
A silver medal could carry a lower estimated value, at $535, the firm figured. For the third-place Paris Olympic medal, its estimate was $4.60.
The estimation is in line with the current 24k gold and sterling silver market values per gram.
However, Paris 2024 medals are embellished with details that could boost their value considerably in the future: a piece of iron from the Eiffel Tower's original frame, placed in the centre of the medal, featuring the logo of Paris 2024.
These pieces of metal were removed from the iconic tower during various renovation and modernisation projects over the years and then preserved by the authorities.
The decision to link the Olympic prize with the symbol of the French capital was taken by a committee of athletes, chaired by France's biathlon legend Martin Fourcade.
Paris 2024 worked on the design with Chaumet, a more-than-two-century-old French luxury jewellery and watch house based in Paris.
Oxford Economics say the value of Olympic gold medals will increase over the years, reaching around $1,612 by 2032, when Australia hosts the Summer Games in Brisbane.
As is traditional, the table prioritises the number of gold medals won. On this basis at the 2020 Olympics, held in Tokyo in 2021, the United States led the field with 39 golds, with China second on 38 and Japan third with 27. If countries have the same number of gold medals, the order is then dictated by which has the most silvers, and finally bronze if the numbers are still identical.