poppins Posted July 29, 2012 Share Posted July 29, 2012 Seems the gold medals are mostly silver just plated with a small amount of gold, not worth much, I thought they would be solid gold Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dosxuk Posted July 29, 2012 Share Posted July 29, 2012 Isn't gold too soft to be used to make solid gold medals - they'd be chipped, scratched and dinted within hours? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poppins Posted July 29, 2012 Author Share Posted July 29, 2012 Isn't gold too soft to be used to make solid gold medals - they'd be chipped, scratched and dinted within hours? True never thought of that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swampster Posted July 29, 2012 Share Posted July 29, 2012 How much do you think it'd cost to make over 1000 Solid Gold medals? have you seen the size of them... they'd be £1000s each! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nagel Posted July 29, 2012 Share Posted July 29, 2012 Isn't gold too soft to be used to make solid gold medals - they'd be chipped, scratched and dinted within hours? They don't get worn for long so even if they were made of 24 carat gold they wouldn't get damaged. The reason they're not solid gold is cost I presume. In the same way there's no silver in silver coinage any more and no copper in copper coins. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dosxuk Posted July 29, 2012 Share Posted July 29, 2012 They don't get worn for long so even if they were made of 24 carat gold they wouldn't get damaged. They do get handed round, shown off and generally handled a lot though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swampster Posted July 29, 2012 Share Posted July 29, 2012 As a rough guide.. using the scrap gold prices on some buy-your-gold-rip-off-merchant site the 1 current gold medal would cost in the region of £12,000 - £13,000 at 24 carat or around £5K at 9 carat. So that's a conservative scrappage estimate.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chem1st Posted July 29, 2012 Share Posted July 29, 2012 Was going to start a thread on this but you beat me to it! 100 years ago the Olympic Gold medals were actually made out of Gold! Today an Olympic Gold medal is just 1.34% Gold (92.5% Silver and 6.16% Copper). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rupert_Baehr Posted July 29, 2012 Share Posted July 29, 2012 I suspect it's just about saving money. Wedding rings are often made of 18carat gold and they don't wear out too quickly. They could save a few pennies more if they scrapped the anthems and played this when they awarded the Yellow medals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chem1st Posted July 29, 2012 Share Posted July 29, 2012 http://www.london2012.com/medals/about/ Medal specification - The London 2012 Olympic medals weigh 375-400g, are 85mm in diameter and 7mm thick. - The gold medal is made up of 92.5% silver and 1.34% gold, with the remainder copper (a minimum of 6g of gold). - The silver medal is made up of 92.5% silver, with the remainder copper. - The bronze medal is made up of 97.0% copper, 2.5% zinc and 0.5% tin. The precious ore for the medals has been supplied by London 2012 sponsor Rio Tinto and was mined at Kennecott Utah Copper Mine near Salt Lake City in America, as well as from the Oyu Tolgoi project in Mongolia. For the small amount of non-precious elements that make up the bronze medals, the zinc was sourced from a mine in Australia as well as from recycled stock, while the tin originates from a mine in Cornwall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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