{"id":43935,"date":"2026-02-07T12:57:58","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T12:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=43935"},"modified":"2026-02-07T12:57:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T12:57:58","slug":"what-an-olympic-medal-is-worth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=43935","title":{"rendered":"What an Olympic Medal Is Worth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text  svelte-i5c8kc\">Olympic gold medals haven\u2019t been actual gold for over a century. The last solid, 24-karat gold medal to be awarded was at the 1912 Games in Stockholm, according to the International Olympic Committee.<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text  svelte-i5c8kc\">Since then, they\u2019ve been mostly made up of silver \u2014 with six grams of thin gold plating on the outside.<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-wrapper_meta g-text-align-left svelte-1p67b3d\" style=\"--g-caption-display:inline;--g-caption-margin-bottom:0;\">  <span class=\"g-source svelte-1p67b3d\">Source: International Olympic Committee<\/span> <\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text  svelte-i5c8kc\">But especially as the prices of gold and other metals have jumped recently, those six grams make a big difference.<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text  svelte-i5c8kc\">As of Feb. 6, gold was trading at $4,889 an ounce \u2014 up 70 percent from its price a year ago. It\u2019s about double what it was worth during the 2024 Paris Olympics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text  svelte-i5c8kc\">Silver was trading at $77 an ounce \u2014 up 138 percent from a year ago, and almost triple what it was worth during the 2024 Olympics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text  svelte-i5c8kc\">The values of gold and silver have soared over the last year \u2014 silver rose 60 percent in January 2026 alone \u2014 as investors seek safe places to park their money during heightened geopolitical turmoil and worries about inflation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text  svelte-i5c8kc\">Olympic athletes don\u2019t compete to resell their medals, and most are in the Games for the prestige the medals represent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text  svelte-i5c8kc\">The movements in the precious metal markets in the run-up to this year\u2019s Games in Italy, however, have drawn new attention to the real value of the athletes\u2019 accomplishment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-wrapper_meta g-text-align-left svelte-1p67b3d\" style=\"--g-caption-display:inline;--g-caption-margin-bottom:0;\"><span class=\"g-caption svelte-1p67b3d\">A gold medal from this year\u2019s games. (Photo by Emmanuele Ciancaglini\/Getty Images)<\/span>   <\/p>\n<p class=\"g-text  svelte-i5c8kc\">Even with volatility in recent days \u2014 both metals plunged in value last week, as analysts speculated that the prices had become overvalued \u2014 gold and silver medals are worth well over twice what they were worth at the 2024 Paris Olympics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"g-wrapper_meta g-text-align-left svelte-1p67b3d\" style=\"--g-caption-display:inline;--g-caption-margin-bottom:0;\"> <span class=\"g-note svelte-1p67b3d\">Note: Medal values for 2026 were calculated with the closing price of gold and silver at 4 p.m. Eastern time on Feb. 6, 2026. Medal values for 2024 were calculated with the closing price of gold and silver on July 26, 2024, the first day of the Paris Olympics.<\/span> <span class=\"g-source svelte-1p67b3d\">Source: FactSet<\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Olympic gold medals haven\u2019t been actual gold for over a century. The last solid, 24-karat gold medal to be awarded was at the 1912 Games in Stockholm, according to the International Olympic Committee. Since then, they\u2019ve been mostly made up of silver \u2014 with six grams of thin gold plating on the outside. Source: International<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[16741,7719,4714],"class_list":{"0":"post-43935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-medal","9":"tag-olympic","10":"tag-worth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}