(Mike Maharrey, Money Metals News Service) It’s really exciting watching those Olympic athletes go for those silver medals, eh?
No, you don’t need to send me emails telling me there is a typo in the first line of my article. I meant what I wrote. They are going for silver.
Now, you might be thinking, ‘Mike must be on cold meds and his thinking is fuzzy.’ Well, I am indeed on cold meds. But my thinking is just fine, thank you very much!
Yes, I know that Olympic winners earn gold medals. But the truth of the matter is that they’re mostly silver.
The 2026 Olympic gold medal is formed of 500 grams of sterling silver, an alloy containing 92.5 percent by weight of silver and 7.5 percent by weight of other metals. They are then coated with 6 grams of 24-karat gold.
Silver medals are made from 500 grams of sterling silver, and bronze medals are, well, bronze.
One thing is for certain: winners of these Winter Olympic events are getting medals worth a heck of a lot more than the summer athletes won in Paris in 2024.
The melt value of a 2026 silver medal (and the silver content in a gold medal) is around $1,160 at the current spot price of around $78.
And what was the melt value of a 2024 Olympic silver medal?
Around $535.
Even with just 6 grams of gold, the melt value of gold is significantly higher. At $5,000 an ounce, 6 grams of gold costs about $965. That makes the total value of the metal in a gold medal at $2,125.
When athletes competed in Paris in the 2024 Summer Games, the price of gold was less than half what it is today, at around $2,400 an ounce.
Axios put the value of Olympic medals in a cool inflation-adjusted chart for us. The silver price was a bit higher when Axios ran its numbers, but it is still a good visual representation.
Now, imagine if those gold medals were made of solid gold. You would be talking about a medal worth more than $83,300!
Now you know why they make the gold medal out of silver.
According to Olympic records, medals of pure gold were only handed out twice – the first time during the St. Louis Games in 1904 and then during the London Games in 1908. The medals were much smaller back then, and the average price of gold in 1904 was a mere $18.96 per ounce.
And what about those bronze medals?
Bronze is an alloy of copper and zinc. Depending on the exact formulation of the medal, it’s melt-value is about four bucks.
Lesson: don’t come in third.
And another lesson – gold and silver are a good store of value!
Photo: Fondazione Milano Cortina 2026
Mike Maharrey is a journalist and market analyst for Money Metals with over a decade of experience in precious metals. He holds a BS in accounting from the University of Kentucky and a BA in journalism from the University of South Florida.
