Fun on Friday: Would You Steal From This Dude?

Do you know what’s pretty ballsy? Stealing from a professional wrestler.

Yeah, I know pro wrestling is fake. (No, really, it is.) But that doesn’t change the fact that pro wrestlers are big, strong athletes.

In fact, before he went into fake wrestling, Kurt Angle was a real wrestler and won an Olympic gold medal in the sport. And that brings us to a WWE fan with sticky fingers and apparently not too much common sense.

When Angle started in WWE, he used his gold medal as a prop. Yes. The real gold medal. One night, our sticky-fingered fan pilfered a bag that had the medal inside while Angle was signing autographs. Fortunately for our intrepid thief, Angle didn’t see it happen. I suspect if he had, things would not have gone well for the aforementioned fan.

On the other hand, Angle was fortunate that peer pressure is a thing. When Angle proclaimed that somebody stole his medal, another fan who knew the thief gave the bandit a call. Angle talked about it on The Kurt Angle Show Podcast as reported by Wrestling Inc.

Thank god a fan called that fan that stole it on their cell phone and said ‘That bag didn’t have t-shirts or merchandise in it, it had Kurt’s real gold medal, you need to bring it back.’”

Now, I’m going to take a wild guess that fan #2 was in on the heist. The duo thought they could score some free merch. Fortunately for Angle, there is apparently at least a modicum of honor among these thieves.

At any rate, the fan didn’t just walk up and hand Angle the bag. That was probably good for his teeth. But Angle did end up finding the bag with the medal safely inside around the corner next to a bus.

Long story short, I stopped using my gold medal right then and there.”

Ummmm yeah. I’m not sure what made him think using an actual Olympic gold medal as a prop was a good idea. But I did say pro wrestlers are big strong athletes – that doesn’t necessarily mean bright.

Anyway, Vince McMahon made three fake medals to use in the show.

And guess what? Two of those ended up getting stolen as well.

Whenever I would have my match I would go out to the ring, take my medal off, place it on the mat or steps and wrestle my match and one of the fans hopped over and grabbed the medal and hopped back and ran away. That happened twice, there was only one left by the time I left the WWE.”

From this, I must conclude some wrestling fans are just nuts!

Here’s a fun fact – the Olympic gold medal is mostly made out of silver. True story. The gold medal is actually formed mostly out of silver coated with about 6 grams of gold plating.

So, gold medal winners – for all practical purposes – you’re getting a silver medal.

Sorry about your luck.

In other words, the actual monetary value of a gold medal isn’t as much as you might think – although silver is nothing to sneeze at. According to the International Olympic Committee, the 2018 Winter Olympic gold medal was made out of 99.99% pure silver and weighed 586 grams. That’s the same purity as a US Silver Eagle bullion coin. If you do the math using the current price of silver, the silver in the gold medal is valued at over $500.

So, I guess it’s worth stealing. But is it worth losing your teeth over?

Fun on Friday is a weekly SchiffGold feature. We 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. Click here to read other posts in this series.

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