The Olympics are finally on!! If you are following it, you probably wondered what are the Olympic medals made out of? Are they made from real gold?
A bit of history
The Olympic Games started in ancient Greece, but the first Olympic medal wasn’t given until the 1896 Olympics in Athens, Greece, where winners were given a silver medal and an olive branch. Gold medals, however, weren’t given until the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri (Yahoo)
What are the medals made out of?
The medals for the Olympic Games Tokyo this year are made from gold, silver and bronze but all those metals have been recycled from electronic waste.
“In the two years between April 2017 and March 2019, 100 percent of the metals required to manufacture the approximately 5,000 gold, silver and bronze medals were extracted from small electronic devices contributed by people from all over Japan” – Olympics.com
This project aims to contribute to a sustainable and environmental-friendly future.
Are the gold medals made from real gold?
The short answer is yes, but they are not made from 100% gold.
According to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), gold and silver medals are required to be at least 92.5 percent silver. A minimum of at least 6 grams of pure gold is required for the plating of the gold medals.
On the other hand, silver medals are made of pure silver, while bronze medals are 95 percent copper and 5 percent zinc (Yahoo).
But this was not always the case. If you won a gold medal at the Olympics up until 1912, you would have received a medal made from solid gold. The value of gold in one of those medals in current terms would be $13,000 (Canberra Times).
But with only 6 grams of pure gold, the modern gold medal is only worth around $800.
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