The first Olympic Games were held in Ancient Greece as part of a religious cult from 776 BC to 394 AD. But they began to award the winners with medals only in 1896 - with the first modern Olympics.

At first, only champions and runners-up were awarded: the athlete was awarded a medal, an olive or laurel branch and a diploma. Medals weighed 60 grams each and consisted of pure silver for first place, bronze or copper for second. Three classes of awards - and gold as the main one - appeared only in 1904.

True, the gold medal is called so only because of its appearance. According to the rules of the IOC, the main award consists of 92.5% silver, and the remaining 7.5% is a solid gold covering of the medal. “Medals for the first and second places are made of 925-1000 silver. The first place medal must be gilded with at least six grams of pure gold,” an unnamed IOC official told Newsweek.

Silver medals are made from 100% silver, while bronze medals are made from 95% copper and 5% zinc.

The size of the medal must not be less than 60 mm in diameter, and the thickness must be at least 3 mm. Gold medals weigh an average of 556 grams, silver medals 550 grams, and bronze medals 450 grams. The cost of medals changes every Olympics, taking into account changes in the prices of precious metals.

According to NBC, the cost of the 2022 Games gold medals was $750.64, with $400 worth of silver and $350 worth of gold. The cost of the highest award of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo was estimated at $820, and the gold of Pyeongchang 2018 was $555.

How much medals are valued on the market

The difference in the cost of medals before and after awarding is colossal, it can soar up to a six-figure sum. This is influenced not only by the personality of the owner, but also by the historical significance of the victory.

Nothing is known about the cost of the medals of the Athens 1896 Olympics, however, in September 2020, at the RR Auctions online auction, an unknown person bought the silver medal of the first Games for $65.6 thousand. Greco-Roman wrestling. Together with the award, the lot offered photographs of the athlete and a personalized invitation to Tsitas for a reception in honor of King George I of Greece.

The record amount was paid by the American billionaire Ron Burkle for the gold of the Berlin-1936 of the legendary American runner Jesse Owens - $ 1.46 million.

The high cost of the medal is due to the fact that an African American won it in front of Adolf Hitler. Jesse became the most titled athlete at those games, taking four gold medals. Another of them was sold at auction in 2019 for $615,000.

An unknown person gave $ 1 million for the gold of Atlanta-1996 to Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko. The buyer, through a representative, notified that he wanted to leave the medal in the Klitschko family, who donated the proceeds to charity.

Often athletes sell their medals personally and not from a good life. For example, four-time Olympic champion Olga Korbut put up for auction a collection of 32 items in 2017. Six items went under the hammer: three gold and two silver medals from the 1972 and 1976 Games, as well as a tracksuit. $230 thousand were received from the sale, of which the legendary athlete got $183.3 thousand, the rest was the auction commission.

The media reported that Korbut, who has lived in the United States since the early 1990s, sold the awards because she was experiencing financial difficulties, but the champion herself denied this. “This is Olympic history, and I want to share it with the whole world,” the former athlete said then.

In the summer of 2019, the first Olympic champion in the history of Belarus, Alexei Grishin, put up a gold medal in Vancouver 2010 and bronze in Sydney 2002. Grishin did this in secret, and when the journalists found out about it, he quickly said that the reason for the sale was the illness of a friend. As a result, gold was bought for $68.7 thousand, bronze - for $28 thousand.

The 1976 Olympic biathlon champion Nikolai Kruglov, being a pensioner, sold two gold medals due to lack of funds to train his own son. The medals were sold in the 1990s for $5,000. All the money went to fees and equipment. In 2006, Nikolai Kruglov Jr. won silver at the Games in Turin and received a cash award of $30,000. According to Komsomolskaya Pravda, Kruglov Jr. added another $20,000, bought the medals and returned them to his father.

Viktor Shuvalov is the first Soviet hockey player to become world and Olympic champion in the same year (1954). But the legend of Soviet hockey in the 1990s had nothing to live on, so the pensioner sold the award, and for only $600. In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin returned the award to the veteran, and patrons bought the medal from collectors.

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