How much gold does a gold medal really contain?

Medals for top Olympic athletes are manufactured in a small factory in Santa Cruz, 70 km from Rio. They go through a detailed machine process, and those meant for the very best also go through a “golden bath”.

A gold medal has no price, as it requires a whole life’s worth of hard work and sacrifice, but a price tag of precisely EUR 529 can still be attached to it.

Even though it weighs half a kilo, actual gold only makes up 6 grams of it, whereas the rest is silver.

The last Olympics in which gold medal were made from gold exclusively took place more than a century ago, in 1912 in Stockholm.

Olympics

Rio de Janeiro Olympics

gold medal

Olympic medals

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silver