Why is gold considered valuable, even today?

Gold last traded at $1,839 an ounce. Silver at $23.97 an ounce.

NEWS SUMMARY: Precious metals climb higher Friday on growing safe-haven demand. U.S. stocks traded lower amid setbacks on U.S. fiscal relief package.

 ZME Science--"Few metals throughout history can boast the same desirability as gold. It has served as a hard currency for virtually every civilization that had access to it, fueled exploration and exploitation, and directly underpinned the dominant economic policy for at least two centuries.

It is, by and large, one of the most valuable and impactful metals humanity has ever used, despite it being quite soft and very shiny. So what exactly made gold so valuable and expensive, and why did various peoples show such interest in beating it into coins? Surprisingly, it's not so much the properties that gold has, it's what other elements don't have. The fact that it's pretty and shiny also helps, too....

Ultimately, what you want in a coin is for it to be a small but dense repository of value so you can carry a lot of purchasing power easily, long-lasting so you can store it and it won't just waste away, distinctive (so it's easy to tell it's the real deal), in limited supply to some extent (either through natural or policy constraints), and safe to handle.

Which brings us neatly to gold. There are around 118 elements on the periodic table, most of them natural, some of them only seen in the lab for fractions of a second at a time. Not many of them are usable for coinage, because not many of them share in those traits listed above....

Gold is, to this day, seen as a solid repository of value. But the inability to control its supply (to either increase or decrease it) when needed shackled governments and rulers in regards to their fiscal policy. Once you link your coinage to gold and silver, your economy is at the mercy of how much of them is available in your area.

In olden, golden times, this wasn't much of an issue; economies were pretty small, local things that moved quite slowly, had low output, and limited technological ability. Gold's longevity, scarcity, portability, the fact that it was verifiable and safe to use made it an ideal tender, despite its limited supply....

Gold's properties made it ideal for the minting of coins...Gold has value because people say it has value - for its uses, its looks, or its association with status, wealth, and power."