Warning: Use of undefined constant full - assumed 'full' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/sydneygo/public_html/wordpress/wp-content/themes/sydneygold/single.php on line 15
why gold is expensive
Gold is not the rarest metal, but it’s quite hard to find and extract in large quantities with pre-industrial technology. Its principal characteristics of being highly corrosion-resistant and easily worked made it highly desirable (and still do) for decorative purposes, and even more so industrially, e.g. where you need high quality electrical connectors.
Mainly ancient tradition. It is fairly easy to process and as far as ancient people were concerned it was indestructible it does not tarnish like silver or copper. It does not dissolve in normal acids and solvents. It is pretty and if you alloy it with other metals it can have a variety of colours. Ancient people used it as a form of exchange as people desired it and if you put it in a damp cupboard it would still be unchanged when you came to use it. Gold has retained its value because it is still rare and people like to adorn them selves with it. Its rarity is explained at
The site gives a guesstimate of total gold production since the beginning of human metallurgy as ten thousand million troy ounces. Platinum is much rarer. The entire worlds production could probably fit in your living room but I challenge you to tell at a distance to tell if a ring was made of platinum white gold (gold silver alloy) or aluminum. If the rest of the world cant tell if your bling is real the show-off value is reduced, that is why for “look at me Im loaded” statements it is gold every time. Once Napoleon served a state banquet on Aluminum plates as it was much more valuable than gold at the time. Once the rarity was lost the value was gone. If the Apollo astronauts had discovered that moon dust was universally rich in gold the price of the stuff would probably have plummeted after we’d found how to transfer all the gold to earth.