Olympic Athletes Go for the SILVER Over Gold!

It’s really exciting watching those Olympic athletes trying to win those silver medals, eh?

That's right, they are literally going for silver, not gold.

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 what 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 $1,200 at the current spot price of silver of $78.

And what was the melt value of a 2024 Olympic silver medal?

At that time around $535.

Even with just 6 grams of gold, the melt value of gold medal 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.

Now, imagine if those gold medals were made of solid gold. You would be talking about a medal worth more than $83,300!

I guess that explains 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, its melt-value is about four bucks.

Lesson: don’t come in third.

And another lesson – gold and silver are a good store of value!

And finally, here, before we get to this week’s interview let’s take a look at the price action in the metals markets.

Gold is regaining what it lost yesterday here today and is now in positive territory for the week and checks in at $5,034 an ounce, good for a 1.1% weekly advance.

Silver meanwhile has seen a fair amount of volatility throughout the week again here, but on the whole the white metal is little changed since last Friday’s close. Spot silver currently comes in at $78.27 an ounce, off 0.6% with a few hours left of trading for the week.

Platinum is closing the week on a nice upswing based on where it was a day or two ago, but the industrial metal is still down 1.2% to check in at $2,091. And finally, palladium is off 2.1% to trade at $1,685 as of this Friday midday recording.

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