$620? That’s gold, Jerry

Precious-metalscompany Lear Capital has quantified the value of London gold, silver and bronze medals. The winners of the roughly 400-gram medals — at three-quarters of a pound, they are the heaviest Olympic prizes ever — will tell you they are priceless symbols of many years of dedication, hard work, joy and heartbreak. But in this dollars-and-cents world, some medals find their way to auction not so many years after they are presented.

Lear calculates that the London gold medal, which is six grams of gold and 394 grams of silver, is valued at $620.82 based on today’s precious-metals market. Canadian chef de mission Mark Tewksbury’s 1992 Barcelona gold, by comparison, is valued at $484.12.

The last Olympics to present solid gold medals to winners was Stockholm in 1912. Those medals are valued at $1,207.86. Gold from Paris 1900: $2,667.36.

Nifty digital poster with more detail here: tinyurl.com/ bmuons7

Montreal still reigns Lots of teeth-gnashing in Britain over the fact it took the host nation five days to finally strike gold, winning a couple on Wednesday. As their wait continued, the London Evening Standard reminded impatient readers that Canada made history at Montreal in 1976 by being the first (and still only) host not to win a Summer Games gold; our athletes did win five silver and six bronze.

We also let visitors win all the gold at Calgary in the 1988 Winter Games; Canadians captured two silver and three bronze. Vancouver 2010 simply said, “Enough of this nonsense,” and Canadians won a Winter Olympic record 14 gold medals to go with seven silver and five bronze. It arrived before Rio 2016 The Canadian Olympic Committee has finally released its 378page digital media guide, many days into the Games. Download one at olympic.ca; it is at the drop-down “Media” tab.

The COC does a lot of good things and its internal cheerleading to support the squad is world-class. But maybe we don’t need the official email news releases subject-lined “Woo hooo! ”announcing Canadian medals. We have not yet received any headed “Boohooo!” after non-podium finishes. NBC surely stands for No Bloomin’ Clue The great thing about NBC showing London 2012 is that they’ ll still be airing events when we get home two days after the closing ceremony and we can watch them “live.”

These guys interviewed former three-time world heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield outside Buckingham Palace, seeking his opinion about the opening ceremony, and they mistook him for just another yob in the street.