Why is Gold so Coveted?

There is a tendency to consider that which is not easily available as precious. And gold is a rare metal. While a large amount of gold has been successfully mined and documented in the past, the quantity of gold now available in the Earth’s crust is just a few parts per billion as suggested by geological surveys.

Gold has been considered precious by older civilizations for its lusterous beauty as well its malleability which made it an easy metal to work with. As per the World Gold Council about 184,000 tonnes of gold is currently to be found in people’s personal collections, stored in banks and government reserves as of now.

If that seems a great deal, try this image. All that gold could be laid out on a football ground and will only be about a meter high. So yes, it’s rare. While hopeful optimists once thought about mining gold from sea water they were thwarted.

This was because a liter of sea water has just 13 billionth of a gram of gold. Extracting that just isn’t commercially viable. No, it may be alchemy that finally solves the problem. After all if you find the perfect science experiment to make gold out of normal metals, it is hardly going to be rare anymore.