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Why is Gold considered so valuable?
Sure, it's shiny and pretty...but so are a lot of other substances that don't fetch huge prices. Is this just a matter of a society deeming one thing important and worth money, or is Gold have true value that I don't quite grasp?
answers (13)
Gold considered valuable, because of it's practical use, it's role as investment, it's store of value and it is RARE!
Throughout all of history, only about 116,000 metric tons have been found enough to make a cube about 18 m (59 ft) side.
While gold has industrial uses, it is better known for it's uses in art, jewellery and coinage. Other precious metals include the silver and platinum group metals: ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum.
Hope it will not be like Aluminium. Although aluminium is one of the most commonly occurring elements on Earth, it was initially found to be exceedingly difficult to extract from its various ores. This made the little available pure aluminium which had been discovered (or refined at great expense) more valuable than gold. Bars of aluminium were exhibited alongside the French crown jewels at the Exposition Universelle of 1855, and Napoleon III's most important guests were given aluminium cutlery, while those less worthy dined with mere silver. Additionally, the pyramidal top to the Washington Monument is made of pure aluminium. At the time of the monument's construction, aluminium was as expensive as silver. Over time, however, the price of the metal has dropped; the invention of the Hall-Héroult process in 1886 caused the high price of aluminium to permanently collapse
Throughout all of history, only about 116,000 metric tons have been found enough to make a cube about 18 m (59 ft) side.
While gold has industrial uses, it is better known for it's uses in art, jewellery and coinage. Other precious metals include the silver and platinum group metals: ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum.
Hope it will not be like Aluminium. Although aluminium is one of the most commonly occurring elements on Earth, it was initially found to be exceedingly difficult to extract from its various ores. This made the little available pure aluminium which had been discovered (or refined at great expense) more valuable than gold. Bars of aluminium were exhibited alongside the French crown jewels at the Exposition Universelle of 1855, and Napoleon III's most important guests were given aluminium cutlery, while those less worthy dined with mere silver. Additionally, the pyramidal top to the Washington Monument is made of pure aluminium. At the time of the monument's construction, aluminium was as expensive as silver. Over time, however, the price of the metal has dropped; the invention of the Hall-Héroult process in 1886 caused the high price of aluminium to permanently collapse
--Quote--
Gold is one of three precious metals, the others being Platinum and to a lesser extent silver. The main reason for their value is that they are rare. You can put all the gold ever found in a cube less than 150 feet.
--/Quote--
Gold is one of three precious metals, the others being Platinum and to a lesser extent silver. The main reason for their value is that they are rare. You can put all the gold ever found in a cube less than 150 feet.
--/Quote--
Because Jake needs some Org 12 to fly his spaceship.
The real reason is that there are lots of crazy people like me out there who are willing to trade lots and lots of zinc, copper, and paper for a little gold.
The real reason is that there are lots of crazy people like me out there who are willing to trade lots and lots of zinc, copper, and paper for a little gold.
All these facts were extracted from wikipedia.
I guess it is more than a social convention and probably became one because of the following facts:
Gold is the most malleable and ductile pure metal known
It doesn't rust in air or water
It is not attacked by single acids such as hydrochloric, nitric or sulphuric acids.
It is insoluble in nitric acid, which will dissolve silver and base metals.
It is a good conductor of heat and electricity.
Non toxic.
Tasteless.
The applications are numerous from monetary exchange (obviously) to dentistry and basic research in cell biology (you can label proteins with a coloidal suspension of gold and antibodies and obtain images in the electron microscope, just to name one).
So besides shiny and pretty it is extremely useful.
I guess it is more than a social convention and probably became one because of the following facts:
Gold is the most malleable and ductile pure metal known
It doesn't rust in air or water
It is not attacked by single acids such as hydrochloric, nitric or sulphuric acids.
It is insoluble in nitric acid, which will dissolve silver and base metals.
It is a good conductor of heat and electricity.
Non toxic.
Tasteless.
The applications are numerous from monetary exchange (obviously) to dentistry and basic research in cell biology (you can label proteins with a coloidal suspension of gold and antibodies and obtain images in the electron microscope, just to name one).
So besides shiny and pretty it is extremely useful.
Gold or Gold dust is also used to lift finger prints on soft ethelene products such as plastic and soft rubber, when traditional dust is inefective
because it is rare
source(s):
www.dmsolar.com
www.dmsolar.com
Because there a an almost finite amount it has real value. Unlike paper money which can be printed by the ream it has real value because of its limited availability. It can be mined but that is a limiting process. Paper money can be printed to add to the treasury but beacuse more is printed it has less value.
Simply put it is supply and demand.
One of the reasons for runaway inflation is beacuse there are so many more dollars out there because the government thinks that by just printing more there is more. When money supplies increase it becomes of less value so it takes more to purchase things.
Simply put it is supply and demand.
One of the reasons for runaway inflation is beacuse there are so many more dollars out there because the government thinks that by just printing more there is more. When money supplies increase it becomes of less value so it takes more to purchase things.
also to let you jnow that at one point gold was traded for salt..... meaning salt once had a higher value than gold
"What is life without a little salt."
well salt was the only way to presevre food so there was no life with out a little salt lol
Gold is valuable because it is.
(Brief history of economics:
Bob the Caveman decides he likes gold because it's shiny and rare and will give people stuff for it.
Jim the Caveman has gold, and wants stuff, but he doesn't want Bob's stuff, he wants Greg's stuff. So, he gives Greg the Caveman his gold for Greg's stuff. Greg doesn't particularly like gold, but he knows that he can give it to Bob for stuff. This spreads throughout the world and economics is born.)
(Brief history of economics:
Bob the Caveman decides he likes gold because it's shiny and rare and will give people stuff for it.
Jim the Caveman has gold, and wants stuff, but he doesn't want Bob's stuff, he wants Greg's stuff. So, he gives Greg the Caveman his gold for Greg's stuff. Greg doesn't particularly like gold, but he knows that he can give it to Bob for stuff. This spreads throughout the world and economics is born.)
Gold is a rare metal that was original used as money or barter way back when since prehistoric times. It's the oldest financial instrument in history. Since the days of hieroglyphics as early as 2600 BC mentioned gold. Today gold is one of the precious metals including silver, platinum, and palladium.
It costs a penny and a half to print a 100 US dollar bill, whereas it costs a lot of money to bring the gold out of the ground from gold mines in South Africa. A rich gold mine is good if it can produce a quarter of an ounce per ton. This means the miners have to go down 4 miles in the earth to crush it, refine, haul it up, just to get a little quarter of an ounce, so gold is money.
Gold is one of the precious metals that has a store of value. As a store of value it is meant that gold is a commodity and a form of money. It must be able to be reliably saved, stored, and retrieved (and useful when retrieved).
Other stores of value include: real estate, silver, base metals including copper and nickel, precious stones, and precious metals
collectibles, e.g. original art by a famous artist, antiques, and livestock.
Gold is also the most malleable and ductile of all metals.
Quoted from Wikipedia:
"Gold has been considered valuable since prehistoric times. While it might originally have been used in barter for its value in ornamentation and rituals, gold and silver became established as a form of commodity money and were first minted by the Lydian king Croesus around 560 BC. For all of recorded history at all times and in all circumstances gold remains money. Thus Gold is the ultimate form of payment. Interestingly, as evidence of its monetary nature gold is the only commodity produced by humans to be hoarded."
"Around 500 BC, the touchstone became available, allowing relatively easy detection of forgeries, and in the third century BC, Archimedes invented a method of determining an object's density. Since gold was the densest substance then known, this could be used to verify an object was made of pure gold without destroying it."
It costs a penny and a half to print a 100 US dollar bill, whereas it costs a lot of money to bring the gold out of the ground from gold mines in South Africa. A rich gold mine is good if it can produce a quarter of an ounce per ton. This means the miners have to go down 4 miles in the earth to crush it, refine, haul it up, just to get a little quarter of an ounce, so gold is money.
Gold is one of the precious metals that has a store of value. As a store of value it is meant that gold is a commodity and a form of money. It must be able to be reliably saved, stored, and retrieved (and useful when retrieved).
Other stores of value include: real estate, silver, base metals including copper and nickel, precious stones, and precious metals
collectibles, e.g. original art by a famous artist, antiques, and livestock.
Gold is also the most malleable and ductile of all metals.
Quoted from Wikipedia:
"Gold has been considered valuable since prehistoric times. While it might originally have been used in barter for its value in ornamentation and rituals, gold and silver became established as a form of commodity money and were first minted by the Lydian king Croesus around 560 BC. For all of recorded history at all times and in all circumstances gold remains money. Thus Gold is the ultimate form of payment. Interestingly, as evidence of its monetary nature gold is the only commodity produced by humans to be hoarded."
"Around 500 BC, the touchstone became available, allowing relatively easy detection of forgeries, and in the third century BC, Archimedes invented a method of determining an object's density. Since gold was the densest substance then known, this could be used to verify an object was made of pure gold without destroying it."
source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_as_money
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Store_of_value
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precious_metal
http://www.goldprice.org/gold-price.html
http://www.goldprice.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_as_money
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Store_of_value
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precious_metal
http://www.goldprice.org/gold-price.html
http://www.goldprice.org
Like bonds and equities, gold is considered to have "intrinsic value", or stable value. This means that while contemporary currencies fall prey to inflation, gold remains at a constant.
An example of this in practice would be Fort Knox, which originally housed the equivalent amount of gold to back up each U.S. dollar (i.e. "the gold standard"). That way, if the US$ suddenly became worthless, the gold could replace the country's economy on the international market, allowing for borrowing, etc. to rebuild and reinstate the dollar.
Other countries have also operated in this manner but, like the U.S., the amount of fiat currency in circulation was increased beyond the gold standard due to population growth. (Fiat currency is currency of value because a population or culture declares it to have worth. AKA paper money.)
---I'm out of time right now, but I will comment later about the reasons gold was "assigned" intrinsic value.---
An example of this in practice would be Fort Knox, which originally housed the equivalent amount of gold to back up each U.S. dollar (i.e. "the gold standard"). That way, if the US$ suddenly became worthless, the gold could replace the country's economy on the international market, allowing for borrowing, etc. to rebuild and reinstate the dollar.
Other countries have also operated in this manner but, like the U.S., the amount of fiat currency in circulation was increased beyond the gold standard due to population growth. (Fiat currency is currency of value because a population or culture declares it to have worth. AKA paper money.)
---I'm out of time right now, but I will comment later about the reasons gold was "assigned" intrinsic value.---
source(s):
1. http://www.gata.org/files/PeterMillarGoldNoteMay06.pdf
2. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/fort-knox-depository.htm
3. http://www.uiowa.edu/ifdebook/faq/faq_docs/gold_standard.shtml
1. http://www.gata.org/files/PeterMillarGoldNoteMay06.pdf
2. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/fort-knox-depository.htm
3. http://www.uiowa.edu/ifdebook/faq/faq_docs/gold_standard.shtml
Historically, the availability of gold only increased by 2% each year. This factor, combined with gold's easy portability and acceptance across cultures even before foreign contact, has established it as a fixed rate currency without heed to geographic borders or economic depression.
http://tinyurl.com/c4hkk9 (Google Books)
http://tinyurl.com/c4hkk9 (Google Books)
Gold has many values not only as a (common knowledge) monetary value, but as an element like other metals or elements plays and important role in science and technological developments. ie: Gold or Gold dust is use in fingerprint extraction on etheline based products such as plastics or soft rubber where traditional dusting methods fail.
source(s):
CSI New York episode
CSI New York episode
Because it is a limited commodity that there is significant demand for, same reason crude oil, coffee and grains are valuable, they are all commodities that are available in limited supply. As long as there is demand for gold which exceeds the supply, it will have a relatively high price.
Karl Marx originally set out by wondering why it was that milk, which was immensely useful, was cheaper than gold, which is an unnecessary luxury. The most important factor in making gold valuable is its relative rarity. You can't have value in something that's very common, no matter how useful it is.
The nice thing about gold is that it doesn't go away. It doesn't rust, like the far-more-useful iron, or oxidize like copper or silver. That keeps it pretty for a long time. And you don't have to worry about your value literally falling into dust.
Another aspect of gold (and to a lesser extent silver) is that it is relatively easy to find. You don't have to refine gold, you simply find it in lumps. It's also nice and soft, which makes it easy to make jewelry out of. That makes it ideal for showing off your wealth.
Copper and silver have some of the same properties: they're both pretty, and they're both easily made into jewelry. But copper is more common, and more easily oxidized than silver is. That makes copper less valuable than silver, even though copper is more generally useful.
Gold, like other important metals, has some unique physical, chemical, and optical attributes that make it the best material for a certain application. For example, gold is very ductile and for some electronic components like bonding wires, the ability to draw gold alloys into extremely thin diameters without breaking is a critical property in the manufacturing process.
http://beaut.ie/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/gold-coins-images.jpeg
Gold is also extremely malleable, so in the annealed state it can be hammered cold into a translucent wafer 0.000013 cm thick. One ounce of gold can be beaten into a sheet covering over 9 square metres and 0.000018 cm thick. Bulk gold has a familiar yellow colour of course. However, when particles of gold are small enough their colour is actually ruby red.
This effect has been used to colour glass red, even in Roman times, but if such tiny particles are allowed to coalesce in a controlled fashion, their colour can be varied from pink through violet to blue. This unique property has been used as a colorimetric indicator in home pregnancy tests.
source(s):
http://www.espi-metals.com/msds's/gold.htm
http://www.tanaka-precious.com/catalog/material.html
http://periodic.lanl.gov/elements/79.html
http://www.gold.org/discover/knowledge/faqs/
http://www.gold.org/value/stats/statistics/gold_demand/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold
http://www.espi-metals.com/msds's/gold.htm
http://www.tanaka-precious.com/catalog/material.html
http://periodic.lanl.gov/elements/79.html
http://www.gold.org/discover/knowledge/faqs/
http://www.gold.org/value/stats/statistics/gold_demand/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold
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