The Actual Real Cost of an Olympic Medal

by Rebecca Pederson

Cost to produce an Olympic gold medal (composed of 550 grams of silver and 6 grams of pure gold): $642 (approx.)
Or, the amount of money I’d pay to travel back to a time before Ryan Lochte’s nonsensical Twitter feed revealed the devastating news that his brain has no wrinkles, a realization that led to my brain telling my vagina that we are not allowed to have a crush on him anymore.
Cost to produce an Olympic silver medal (composed of 509 grams of silver and 41 grams of copper): $329 (approx.)
Or, about how much I’d spend on a single t-shirt if I ran into Missy Franklin in the changing room at the mall and she told me it looked good and then flashed that winning smile at me.

Cost to produce an Olympic bronze medal (composed of 450 grams of copper and 50 grams of tin and zinc): $5 (approx.)
Or, what I’m willing to throw down for a happy hour beer with Michael Phelps. (I’m only staying for one drink. I don’t want to sit around all night and listen to you talk about how you’re the most decorated Olympian of all time or how everybody is dying for you to do Rio in 2016, Mr. Flying Fish. I just want to see your wingspan in real life and then I want to go home.)

Speaking of Michael Phelps, he has somewhere around $12,224 worth of Olympics medals swinging ‘round his Stretch Armstrong neck. So actually, happy hour drinks are on him.

Thanks for the numbers, The Daily Mail!

Rebecca Pederson is a senior editor at Yelp. Her Aunt Leslie loves her blog.

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