American Hartford President Max Baecker analyzes the recent gold and silver market on ‘Varney & Co.’
The latest surge in gold and silver costs to file highs will make the medals awarded on the 2026 Winter Olympics the most costly in historical past.
The Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics formally start on Friday and the worth of the gold and silver medals that can be awarded to the winners and runners-up, respectively, have risen with the value of the dear metals.
The spot worth of gold has risen over 70% within the final yr, buying and selling round $4,950 per ounce on Friday. In that timeframe, silver costs have surged 143% and the metallic is buying and selling round $76 per ounce as of Friday.
Whereas Olympic medals have a transparent sentimental worth to the athletes who’ve sometimes spent years coaching to win them, that worth surge will increase the underlying worth of the medals.
Samples of the silver, gold, and bronze medals of the 2026 Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics are displayed on the Italian Mint in Rome, Italy, on Dec. 5, 2025. (Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters)
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Medals that can be awarded through the Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Video games are made by the Italian State Mint and Polygraphic Institute based mostly on set specs utilizing metallic that was recycled from its personal manufacturing waste, occasion organizers stated in asserting the design final summer season.
All medals are 80 mm in diameter with a thickness of 10 mm – though the gold, silver and bronze medals have completely different compositions.
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Tenor Andrea Bocelli performs through the opening ceremony of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy. (Mike Segar/Reuters)
Gold medals awarded on the 2026 Winter Video games may have simply 6 grams of gold of their complete weight of 506 grams, with the rest composed of silver. Silver medals are made solely of silver and weigh 500 grams.
At a worth of $4,950 per Troy ounce, six grams of gold quantities to about $955, whereas the five hundred grams of silver are value about $1,221 given a worth of $76 an oz.
Bronze medals are fabricated from copper and weigh 420 grams (about 0.93 lbs). At a present market charge of $5.89 per pound, a bronze medal is valued at roughly $5.45.
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Flagbearer Erin Jackson of United States within the athletes parade through the opening ceremony of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy. (Yara Nardi/Reuters)
Olympians sometimes select to promote their medals, which might go for considerably greater costs at public sale than the intrinsic worth of the metals they’re composed of as a result of novelty and shortage of an Olympic medal.
4-time Olympic gold medalist Greg Louganis, who’s broadly thought to be one of many best American divers of all-time, stated in a social media put up final yr that he auctioned three of his medals – two gold medals from the 1984 and 1988 Video games and a silver from the 1976 Montreal Olympics – to assist finance a transfer to Panama. In accordance with SwimSwam, the public sale earned Louganis greater than $430,000.
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Swimmer Ryan Lochte in motion through the Males’s 200M Particular person Medley Closing at Kazan Enviornment in Kazan, Russia in 2015. (Thomas Lovelock /Sports activities Illustrated by way of Getty Photographs)
Swimmer Ryan Lochte – who gained six gold medals, three silver and three bronze throughout 4 appearances on the Summer time Olympics – offered three of his golds at public sale final month for $385,520.
Fox Information Digital’s Paulina Dedaj contributed to this report.
