Olympians compete for the love of their sport. The commercial endorsements should they win a gold medal ain’t bad either. But then if that medal really was made of gold, they’d be set right nicely.

The gold medals for the 2012 Olympics weigh in at 400 grams, the heaviest for the Summer Games to date. If they were made of solid gold at today’s market prices each would be worth $22,400. Michael Phelps haul from the Beijing Games would have been worth $180,000, and if you add in the gold he won at the Athens Games he’d be sitting on $313,000 worth of gold. Not bad for a stoner.

But gold medals are really more silver. 93% in fact. The gold in those awards only makes up 1.34% of their total weight (with 6.16% thanks to copper). Melted down, a 2012 Olympic Gold medal would be worth $650. The last series of Olympic medals to be made of solid gold were awarded at the 1912 Olympics.

There is the intrinsic value to consider too however. U.S. swimmer Anthony Ervin sold his gold medal from the 2000 Olympics for $17,100 (he donated the money to a tsunami relief fund and may well be winning yet another in London). Ukrainian boxing legend Vladimir Klitschko auctioned off his 1996 gold medal for $1 million, also donating the cash to charity (the winning bidder returned the medal to Klitschko). Chinese gymnast Zou Kai also auctioned off one of his gold medals from Beijing with the proceeds going to the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake fund. If you can’t quite come up with that kind of cash, there was, and may still be, an auction on eBay for a bronze medal from the 1956 Olympics currently at $12,000.

[‘The XXX Games’ are a series of posts about hot Olympians, gay competitors – both present and past – and general articles about the 2012 London Olympics of interest to gay men. So, yeah, lots of hot male eye candy. Click the XXX Games graphic below for additional news, stories, and pictures.]