Never, Ever Clean an Olympic Gold Medal with Fantastic

If you laughed at the joke about the man who liked his gold medal so much he had it bronzed, this story will top that.

In the early 1970s, Gary agreed to let his medals be displayed publically under the care of an NRA Field Rep (a retired Sgt. Major of the Marine Corps!) who would keep them in a display that he took to state and county fairs in his Field Rep territory.   A box with a glass covering was built and titled “The Road to Success.”   The medals were about 1/3 of the design and included Gary’s World Championship Medals from 1966 and his Olympic Medals from 1964 and 1968.  A condition of the loan was that the medals would be taken out of the display and secured in a hotel safe or by some similar means whenever the display was not being supervised.

The medals were traveling throughout Nebraska, from county fair to county fair.  One night, the NRA Field Rep and a friend were examining the medals in a hotel room when they observed that the 1964 Tokyo medal had a polished, smooth finish while the 1968 Mexico City medal had a frosted finish (that was by design).   For some unknown and really bizarre reason, they decided that the Mexico City gold medal would look better if it were also shiny so they began to “polish” it, using Fantastic.

They didn’t realize what a mistake they were making until they noticed that when they held their polished medal in the light, it was turning silver.  If you know that today Olympic gold medals are actually silver medals with gold gilding you can understand what they had done.  They had polished the gold gilding off of an Olympic gold medal!

When the medals were returned to our care, the Field Rep confessed and apologized profusely.  Ruth Ann later took the medal to a jeweler to have it re-dipped, but the integrity of the Gold Medal had been compromised forever.  If you look carefully at the medal you can still see many scratches and a dulled finish. 

Olympic medals were only made of solid gold through the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden.   After 1912, the gold medals have been silver medals gilded with real gold.

Each Olympic Organizing Committee determines the specific design of Olympic medals.  Olympic Gold medals are required to be made from at least 92.5% silver, and must contain a minimum of 6 grams of gold.  All Olympic Medals must be at least 3mm thick and 60mm in diameter.

Gold medals are not worth their weight in gold, but they do command high prices when placed up for auction, typically exceeding the value of the metal. For example, a gold medal awarded to the 1980 Olympic men's hockey team garnered a bid in excess of $310,000.

Did this unfortunate mistake that occurred while Gary’s 1968 Olympic gold medal was being shared with many huge public audiences reduce its value or increase it because now this particular medal has a truly unique “war story” to tell?