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Sochi Gold Medal Will Be One Of The Largest In Olympic History, Here's How Much It's Worth

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It'll be one of the biggest but not the most expensive. The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics gold medal’s “podium value” clocks in at approximately $566, a 20% decline from the record $708 value for the gold medals presented at the London 2012 Summer Olympics.

Why the price decline? Are the Russians skimping? Not so fast. It actually has to do with the drop in gold and silver prices over the past two years, from its record highs of 2012.

The Sochi gold medal weighs 531 grams with a thickness of 10 mm, and a diameter of 100 mm, making it one of the largest gold medals in the history of the games (the 2006 Turin Olympics medals were 107mm in diameter and weighed 469 grams). If the gold medal was made of solid gold its value would be approximately $21,478 (reason why the last time pure gold medals were presented was in 1912).

The Olympic gold medals contain 525 grams of silver with a 960 hallmark (beyond the 925 hallmark that International Olympics Committee stipulates) and 6 grams of gold with a 999 hallmark (also a gold medal requirement). A hallmark is a kind of purity standard for precious metals.

The silver medals contain 525 grams of silver with a 960 hallmark. Its podium value is approximately $323. The bronze medals are made of copper mixed with zinc and tin (the elements of bronze) with a 460 hallmark. Its value is about $3.25. Keep in mind these prices do not reflect the labor and other expenses used to make the medals.

All of the metals used in the manufacturing of the medals, including an ecologically-clean alloy of copper and zinc for the bronze medals, come from Russia. The Sochi 2014 medals also use a transparent polycarbonate material, which gives them a sense of lightness and enchances its design.

Leading advertising agencies, jewelers, clockmakers, licensees and Russian designers took part in the competition for the design of the medals. A total of 11 designs were proposed. From these, an expert panel chose the design that best depicted the Sochi 2014 brand concept, according to the Sochi organizing committee.

The main design feature is a “Patchwork Quilt”—a mosaic of national designs from the various cultures and ethnic groups that make up the Russian Federation, according to the Sochi Olympics organizing committee. The design also depicts the varied landscape of Sochi, with the sun’s rays reflecting through a prism of snowy mountain tops onto the beaches of the Black Sea coast.

The front of the medals feature the Olympic rings, while the reverse side contains the name of the competition in English and the logo of the Sochi Games, with the official name of the Games engraved in Russian, English and French on the rim.

Adamas, a Moscow-based jeweler, was commissioned to fabricate approximately 1,300 medals (including those that will be awarded at the Paralympic Winter Games). Approximately two tons of silver, 700 kg of bronze and 6 kg of gold were used in the manufacture of the medals, which took a team of about thirty highly skilled jewelers and engravers several months to craft, according to the International Olympic Committee.

Production of just one medal took an average of 18 hours, according to the organizing committee, and used “difficult and labor intensive complex technological solutions” that combined semi-continuous casting, cutting, turning, electromachining, precision cutting and etching of the metal.

Air pores can develop during the casting process. To avoid this from happening, the cast metal is rolled in a multi-ton rolling mill, where the metal is made. Then comes the mechanical processing, which included turning, electroerosion cutting, high-speed precision cutting and etching. The result is a semi-finished product. The final step: the edges of the medal are polished.

**An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the Sochi gold medal would be the largest in history. It is not the largest on record. The story has been updated to reflect the correction.

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