Fun on Friday: The Most Valuable Trophy in Sports

If you are a regular Fun on Friday reader, you know I love sports. Hockey is my favorite followed by football. My favorite teams are the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Well, all of those worlds collided in a moment of sports harmony this week.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end Rob Gronkowski joined Lightning players at their practice. Gronk even donned the goalie pads. (He showed a pretty solid glove hand.)

Gronkowski even brought along the Lombardi Trophy. Lightning players posed for pictures with the Super Bowl hardware.

Of course, the Lightning players have some hardware of their own. They are the defending Stanley Cup champions.

All of this got me thinking – what is the most valuable trophy in sports? I’m talking pure monetary value.

As it turns out, the Stanley Cup is right up there near the top. In fact, it ranks fourth with an estimated value of about $600,000 – give or take.

The Cup itself is pure silver and the rest of the trophy is formed out of a silver/nickel mix. That gives it value in and of itself. Silver has long been coveted for its beauty and scarcity. I wouldn’t recommend melting the Cup down though. It’s is even more valuable when you factor in the intangibles.

The value of the Lombardi trophy pales in comparison. It’s not even in the top-10. This makes sense because hockey is greater than football. The Super Bowl trophy is estimated to be worth about $10,000. Of course, that’s nothing to sneeze at. The Lombardi trophy is nearly 2-feet tall and made from sterling silver. By the way, sterling is an alloy of silver containing 92.5% by weight of silver and 7.5% by weight of other metals, usually copper.

But if you want to find the most valuable trophy in sports, you have to go to the world’s most popular sport – soccer. The honor goes to the FIFA World Cup trophy.

The trophy is formed from solid 18-karat gold with a weight of over 11 pounds. The melt value of the gold itself comes in at over $100,000, but the estimated value of the trophy is over $20 million. So, you’re not going to see the winners of the World Cup swimming in a fountain with the trophy as has happened with the Stanley Cup. The World Cup winner gets a bronze replica.

The modern FIFA World Cup Trophy is worth significantly more than the original. Prior to 1974, the World Cup winner received the Jules Rimet Trophy, formed out of gold-plated silver. So, FIFA definitely upped its game. Ironically, somebody stole the Jules Rimet Trophy in 1983. Authorities think the thieves probably melted it down.

Monetary value aside, we can certainly debate which trophy is the greatest. (It’s the Stanley Cup. Sure, I may be a tad biased. I’m a hockey player. So? Fight me!) But I think we can all agree that trophies made of precious metals are valuable – even if you hate a particular sport — or all sports!

Fun on Friday is a weekly SchiffGold feature. I dig up some of the off-the-wall and off-beat stories relating to precious metals and share them with you – with tongue firmly planted in cheek. The opinions expressed are my own. They are 100% correct – but not necessarily shared by anybody else here – including Peter Schiff. Click here to read other posts in this series.