How Much A Physical Olympic Gold Medal, Silver Medal And Bronze Medal Are Worth

Winning an Olympic medal can be a valuable experience for athletes. Athletes can see new endorsements and sponsors and also typically get paid out by their respective country.

The winners are also given a medal that has valuable metal material in it and has resale value years down the road.

Olympic Medal Payouts: U.S. athletes that win 2020 Olympic medals are paid $37,500 for golds, $22,500 for silver and $15,000 for bronze.

U.S. athletes that earn more than $1 million annually get the amounts they're paid for winning medals taxed. Michael Phelps paid around $55,000 in taxes from his 2016 Olympic medal-winning payouts, according to Joe Pompliano.

Related Link: 2021 Tokyo Olympic Athletes Not Sharing In Wealth Generated By Worldwide Event 

• Olympic Medal Value: A 2020 Olympic gold medal is valued at $753.36 based on the metals contained inside the medal. A gold medal contains six grams of gold and 500 grams of silver.
• A silver medal is valued at $445.52 made from 550 grams of silver.
• A bronze medal is valued at $4.38 made from 427.5 grams of copper and 22.5 grams of zinc.

Of course, Olympic medals can be quite valuable later in resale at auction depending on the sport, athlete and year of the games.

Typical medal values are $5,000 to $6,000 for golds, $8,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze.

A Jesse Owens 1936 gold medal sold for $1.47 billion in 2017 to billionaire Ron Burkle. Two "Miracle on Ice" 1980 gold medals sold for $310,700 and $262,900.

Before 1960, Olympic medals weren't engraved for the sport or event, making them harder to track to a specific event or athlete.

An 1896 first place medal from the first modern Olympic games sold for $180,000 last week. The first Olympics featured only 250 total athletes and awarded silver medals for first place, bronze for second and no third place medal.

What’s Next: The 2020 Olympics air on the Comcast Corporation CMCSA network of channels.

Host country Japan ranks first with eight gold medals. China leads the overall medal count with 18 medals. The United States ranks second in overall medals with 14 and second in golds with seven, as of Monday morning.

Sydney Olympic 2000 gold medal displayed at the Royal Australian Mint in Canberra, ACT, Australia. Photo by Aditya Joshi on Unsplash