1948–1989 The forges stop, and the buses startHámre stíchnu a rozbehnú sa autobusy

Under communism private workshops were taken over or shut, and the remaining hammer forges stopped being businesses. What replaced them was the daily bus: the enormous steelworks built beside Košice from the end of the 1950s, and the factories of the city, absorbed the working population of the whole Bodva valley. Medzev became what it largely still is — a town people sleep in and travel out of. A few of the old forges were kept as monuments rather than as workplaces, which is the reason any of them survived at all.Za socializmu súkromné dielne prevzali alebo zavreli a zvyšné hámre prestali byť podnikmi. Nahradil ich každodenný autobus: obrovské železiarne, ktoré od konca 50. rokov stavali pri Košiciach, a mestské závody vstrebali pracujúcich z celej doliny Bodvy. Z Medzeva sa stalo to, čím je vo veľkej miere dodnes — mesto, v ktorom sa spí a z ktorého sa dochádza. Zopár starých hámrov zachovali ako pamiatky, nie ako pracoviská, a práve preto sa vôbec nejaké zachovali.