Olympic Gold

[Hoot]

The Royal Canadian Mint (maker of the medals) has a very nice site dedicated to the medals: http://www.mint.ca/store/mint/learn/medals-4400016

 

And to answer why the gold medals are not solid gold, look here: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=288255

 

In that reply is this remark:

 

"The original Olympic Charter, written by French educational reformer,

Pierre de Coubertin, and the 1896 International Olympic Committee,

listed only four general goals in the offering and presentation of the

Olympic games (note that none of them involve rewards or recognition

of any kind):

 

1. To promote the development of those physical and moral qualities

that are the basis of sport.

 

2. To educate young people through sport in a spirit of better

understanding between each other and of friendship, thereby helping to

build a better and more peaceful world.

 

3. To spread the Olympic principles throughout the world, thereby

creating international goodwill; and

 

4. To bring together the athletes of the world for sports festival

every four years: the Olympic Games."

 

In sum, the Olympics are not about the individual athletes, it's about the event, which is union of peace, friendship, goodwill, and sport. Thus, it makes sense that the medals are not pure gold.

 

And if you'd like to know what the composition of the mdals were historically, go here: http://www.hesge.ch/heg/vous_etes/doc/stages/2004/sta04_schnyder_annexe1.pdf

 

Hoot

[RWB]

Good to see you're alive and kickin'!

 

RWB

[Conder101]

Considering the effort involved to win one of these medals I doubt that many are offered for sale. They probably are handed down from generation to generation and kept in the family.

Go do some searching on ebay and you can find unmarked replicas of all three of the China 2008 Olympic medals, gold, silver, and bronze. Made in China of course. Full size unmarked copies.

 

Some collectors might not know this, but every athlete who participates in the Olympics receives a participation medal. Even these medals bring good prices where they are offered for sale. I recall seeing fairly recent participation medals bringing $3,000 in New England area auctions.

Not just the athletes, but the judges, staff, and even some of the regular employees get the medals as well. (I know someone who collects them. His collection is on exhibit in one of the local museums right now. He has all but one I believe. It is a very rare one from an Olympics held in Australia. Because the horses would have had to spend a long period in quarantine the equestrian events were not held in Australia but were conducted in Europe instead. They had different participation medals for each location and natually only made a small number for the Europe location.)

 

The Participation medals are typically much more affordable and the recent ones (back to the early 60's) usually go for a couple hundred or so. (After all they made a lot of them. For example 60,000 of them for the Atlanta games.) There are a fair number of them on ebay as well, and they are actually higher in price than normal right now because the Olympics are going on. Next year when the hype is gone they will be lower.

 

What are the Participation medals made of?

Typically bronze but there have been a few odd ones. I believe one was made out of crystal one year. Possibly Salt Lake in 2002. Here is a link to pictures of most of the Summer game participation medals 1896 - 2008 http://olympic-museum.de/quickview/all_partmed.htm And this link give a little more detail about each, the presentation boxes, number made etc. http://olympic-museum.de/pmedals/pmed1912.htm