[tim333]

Gold's value comes from two main things - it's nice for jewellery and it's expensive to mine. The price has for many centuries approximated (within 3x or so) the mining cost and it doesn't drop to zero because it made nice jewellery from Varnian jewellery 6000 years ago (http://www.ancientfacts.net/7-oldest-pieces-jewelry-world/) to modern wedding rings and that's not changing in a hurry. Both mining costs and market price are about $1200/oz at the moment. Financial uses are a secondary effect that has kind of come and gone.