[noorkhanuk85]

Each gold medal is made up of 92.5 percent silver and 1.34 percent gold, with the remainder copper.

The silver medal (which represents second place) is made up of 92.5 percent silver, with the remainder copper.

The bronze medal is made up of 97 percent copper, 2.5 percent zinc and 0.5 percent tin.

The value of the materials in the gold metal is approximately $644. The silver is worth approximately $330. The bronze medal approximately $4.71 on the current market."

Thoughts?

http://olympics.yardbarker.com/blog/...think/11334214

[Presenttime]

No thoughts about this. The value of the medal itself, sentimental or monetary, has nothing to do with the amount of valuable ore it contains

[Drewski]

People only care about the outside, not the inside. And was a fact made known decades ago when places first started doing this.

Thoughts? Complete nothng story.

[motobrock]

this was on QI a while back .. and cant remember what the cost was to give all the gold medists real gold but i remember thinking that in the grand skeem of things it was worth it .. better then most of the bs stuff they spent money on that was totaly pointless.

[internet tough guy]

at the end of the way, its the record in the history books that really matters

[+ polarity -]

(Original post by motobrock)
better then most of the bs stuff they spent money on that was totaly pointless.

Such as?

[Dmon1Unlimited]

It could be made of wood for all I care and I'd still run around everywhere screaming like a moron if I won a medal....

Lot of symbolic awesomeness wedged into a small block

[Drewski]

(Original post by Dmon1Unlimited)
It could be made of wood for all I care and I'd still run around everywhere screaming like a moron if I won a medal....

Lot of symbolic awesomeness wedged into a small block

This. I'd gladly sacrifice my brother on a pagan alter if it meant winning an Olympic Medal

[Observatory]

Would you rather than the medals had a metal value of $50,000 and that half the budget went on paying for them?

Unless the athlete plans to melt it down it hardly matters.

[motobrock]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...re-Dorset.html

Few things that just seem like places were money was poorly spent... like the g4s crap. The amount they played that guy and he ballsed it up who the hell thought it was a good idea to give him the contract...

Anyone know how much it would cost to give them all solid gold?

Also kinda unrelated butdo they intend on keeping everything they have build for the Olympics?

[Dmon1Unlimited]

---

(Original post by Drewski)
This. I'd gladly sacrifice my brother on a pagan alter if it meant winning an Olympic Medal

Imagine an Olympic medal replacing the ring.

My precious

[motobrock]

(Original post by Observatory)
Would you rather than the medals had a metal value of $50,000 and that half the budget went on paying for them?

Unless the athlete plans to melt it down it hardly matters.

Ok say it costs 50k each to make em real gold. Then it's gonna cost like $15million but in a £9 billion games it a drop in the ocean. And it would make then that bit more special. And something to set the London games apart from others...

[Foghorn Leghorn]

Olympic medals have pretty much always been made this way.

[Hopple]

We're all in this together, even the athletes

[Rhadamanthus]

Of course they are. Have you seen the size of them?



Do you really think they're going to be handing out slabs of gold this size?

[Chumbaniya]

I thought this was common knowledge. This isn't something new. There's no need to use expensive metals in the creation of Olympic medals because absolutely none of their value comes from their composition - it comes from what they represent. If the prize for first place was a piece of coal, it would still have immense value (not in the monetary sense) because it would be a piece of coal representing the fact that you're the best in the world at your chosen discipline.

If anything, I think that fussing over this and trying to change them to real gold would make them less valuable, because that would be emphasising the monetary value that victory brings over the value of victory in and of itself, which is really what the Olympics are about. We're not talking about premiership football here.

[boba]

feel like I should point out that "The bronze medal is made up of 97 percent copper, 2.5 percent zinc and 0.5 percent tin." is basically the same as saying "the bronze medal is made up of 100% bronze" since bronze is a alloy made of mostly copper and usually tin often also with zinc..

[Scumbaggio]

It would be a massive waste of gold if they were primarily gold.

[boba]

(Original post by Drewski)
This. I'd gladly sacrifice my brother on a pagan alter if it meant winning an Olympic Medal

also I completely agree with this and this is why it really doesn't matter what they are actually made of

[Joinedup]

Was this in the daily mail by any chance?
It's supposed to be a prize, not a payment to the athlete.

It's pretty odd how they medals have got larger and more blinged up over the past few decades though, they used to look like large coins and now they're the size of giant cookies. According to wiki they're around 400g this time. If phelps or someone won 8 and tried to wear them all at once it'd be heavier than 3 bags of sugar hanging off his neck.