I read the World Series of Poker summer schedule includes millions of dollars in prizes at about 100 events. Buy-ins range from $300 to $250,000. Will they all be at Horseshoe and Paris? How many of those tournaments will give gold bracelets to winners? Do all of the bracelets look different? How much do they cost to make?
First, yes, all the scores of tournaments, plus the Main Event, of the World Series of Poker will be held at the Horseshoe and Paris.
Second, every official WSOP tournament event awards a gold bracelet to its winner. Sometimes the tournaments are called "bracelet events."
This has been the case since 1976 (with earlier winners receiving them retroactively). The number of such events has grown over time: it was around 14 in 1990, over 50 by around 2010, and has stabilized at 100 live bracelet events for the main Las Vegas summer series in recent years.
They don't all look different, but some are. They're all real gold (typically 10-karat yellow), but the standard/regular event bracelets are simpler, smaller, and more uniform in design in a given year. They often feature gold plates, some diamonds (e.g., the number matching the count of events that year in older designs), and weigh under 100 grams with limited gems.
The Main Event bracelet (and sometimes certain high-profile events like the $50K Poker Players Championship) is significantly more elaborate, larger, heavier (300–445+ grams of gold in recent years), and features thousands of diamonds/gemstones (2,000+ diamonds plus rubies/onyx in recent examples), with unique annual designs, often including card suits or a removable card protector faceplate. Obviously, it is far more valuable and prestigious.
Designs have evolved over the decades (from simple hammered gold in the 1970s to more ornate modern pieces made by companies like Jostens), and special events can have customized variants.
Specific current manufacturing costs are not publicly detailed by WSOP (they treat bracelets as "gifts" with no assigned taxable value to winners), but there is some historical and estimated information.
The very first bracelet in 1976 cost around $500 to make.
Regular-event bracelets today are typically valued/estimated in the $1,000–$2,000 range (materials + craftsmanship), though resale can vary widely.
Main Event bracelets are in an entirely different league, with material/design values appraised up to $500,000 (due to gold weight and thousands of gems), though that's more of a prestige/jewelry appraisal than pure manufacturing cost.
Older reports noted higher-end production involving custom molds, expert labor for stones, and Italian manufacturing for some pieces, but no exact modern per-bracelet factory costs are released. That said, the prestige and history make them priceless to winners regardless of production expense.
