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{{trope}}
[[File:worthless-yellow-
{{quote|'''[[Con Man|Quark]]:''' Someone's extracted all the '''[[Unobtanium|latinum]]!''' There's nothing here but worthless '''gold!'''
▲{{quote|'''[[Con Man|Quark]]:''' Someone's extracted all the '''[[Unobtanium|latinum]]!''' There's nothing here but worthless '''gold!'''<br />
'''[[Ultimate Salesman|Quark]]:''' '''[[Big No|NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!]]'''
▲'''Odo:''' And it's all yours.<br />
The characters of a story run across something very valuable. But, due to ignorance, stupidity or possibly not being from Earth, they discard it as worthless junk. The audience groans in disbelief as wealth beyond their dreams is left lying on the floor.
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Finding gold is the most common example of this trope. Though it has industrial applications as a highly corrosion-resistant electrical conductor and potential as a cheaper alternative to platinum catalysts, almost all of gold's value is due to its rarity. And, in a disaster situation, gold would quickly prove to be worthless after all. This can lead to an ironic [[Death by Materialism]] situation for someone who's "smart" enough to figure out what those funny yellow rocks really are and won't abandon them when they really should be running for the door. Compare [[All That Glitters]].
A common [[Karmic Twist Ending]] is for Earthly characters to encounter a world or dimension where something like gold is so plentiful that it has little value, or where something common on earth, like aluminium or copper, takes the place of gold or platinum as the ultimate precious metal. (
There is [[Truth in Television]] for the reasoning behind this trope. There is a law of economics where materials decrease in value as they become more abundant. (Refer to the above paragraph.)
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May be part of a [[Green Aesop]] on how foolishly humanity rushes for unnecessary luxuries and how money cannot be eaten.
Not to be confused with [[Green Rocks]].
Contrast [[Gold Fever]] (where people go nuts over amounts of gold or some other valuable), [[Gold Makes Everything Shiny]], [[Mundane Object Amazement]], and [[Grail in the Garbage]].▼
▲Contrast [[Gold Fever]] (where people go nuts over amounts of gold or some other valuable), [[Gold Makes Everything Shiny]], [[Mundane Object Amazement]].
Not to be confused with pyrite, also known as "fool's gold".
{{examples}}
== Advertising ==
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3usaGfn7r0w Doritos - Make Your Own -- Crash the Super Bowl 2012 Entry]
{{quote|What am I going to do with all this gold‽}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* In ''[[Elfen Lied]]'', Nana burns thousands of yen on the beach for warmth on a cold night due to never having experienced the world outside the laboratory where she was used as a test subject.
** She then has nightmares of being crucified while naked at the hands of vengeful money-people, thanks to Mayu.
* Taken in all directions in the manga and anime ''[[One Piece]]'':
*
** Speaking of the Whole Cake Island arc, Big Mom has no use for gold or any other valuable material, demanding candy as tribute from her subjects. Before that arc officially started, Fish Man Island is unable to make this payment on time (the equipment at their candy factory breaks) and Luffy volunteers to tell Big Mom about the delay (the fish-men are too afraid to); Luffy claims he had eaten it himself by accident, offering Big Mom a large amount of treasure as monetary compensation; while she does accept that offer (she's lost two ships in a schism with the Kid Pirates and needs funds for the damages) she is still furious, telling him she can't eat gold. Fortunately, this does do what Luffy intended and gets the fish-men off the hook.
* In ''[[Princess Mononoke]]'', there's a scene where a merchant throws a hissy-fit when Ashitaka pays for his bag of rice with a small, yellow rock...At least until a passing monk notices and points out that it's a solid gold nugget, and that it's probably worth three times what she gave him.
* While it's not gold, when [[Hayate the Combat Butler|Hayate]] is told to spend a few (3) days away from the mansion because Nagi's embarrassed, he's given one million yen (~$11,000 US, £8,000). Which he promptly loses. It gets returned to the mansion and Maria counts it, stating that it's almost exactly what he was given for living expenses. Nagi passes by the table and asks what all the [http://www.mangafox.com/manga/hayate_the_combat_butler/c077/13.html chump change] is.
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* Inverted in ''[[Spice and Wolf]]'', which has iron pyrite (also known as ''fool's gold'') suddenly becoming incredibly valuable in one town.
== Comic Books ==
== Comics ==▼
* In ''[[Asterix]] and the Black Gold'', "rock oil" (''petra oleum'') is only valuable because Getafix uses it in its potion.
** And by the end of the story {{spoiler|[[Does This Remind You of Anything?|he discovers a local plant that works just as well]].}}
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* Brazilian comic book writer Mauricio de Sousa uses "worthless petroleum" twice: in stories of the caveman Pitheco and when hillbilly Chuck Billy (Chico Bento) is searching for water ("Damn dirty black water!").
* In one strip of ''[[Dilbert]]'', the following conversation takes place:
{{quote|
'''Dogbert:''' What's even dumber is that it's a rock that's hard to find. }}
** There's also a comic where Dogbert goes into a jewelry store and points out how utterly arbitrary the diamond market is, and convinces the seller to give him a sack of diamonds just to keep the secret from getting out.
* In [[Pre Crisis]] [[Superman]] comics, gold was supposed to have been plentiful and therefore worthless on Krypton.
** More like worth as much as copper, aluminum or another industrial metal. In "World of Krypton," where Superman listens to an autobiography done by Jor-El, the pre-Heel General Zod asks Jor-El about working with one of the heaviest metals known. Jor-El counters "It's one of the cheapest, General--and the weight factor is irrelevant since we're dealing with anti-gravity rather than conventional thrust engines! And by using a cheap metal like gold, I've managed to cut costs by two-thirds!"
* In an [[Elseworld
** To add insult to injury, they proceed to tax Superman for the diamonds that he did create, at the value they were during the time he created them (before they became worthless). It pretty much bankrupted him.
* In an issue of [[Marvel Comics]]' ''[[What If]]?'', [[Conan]] was transported to present day [[New York City]]. He inadvertently mugged a New Yorker, who tossed all his money at Conan and ran. Conan ignored the hundreds of dollars in bills and kept the 85¢ in change.
* One ''Thimble Theater'' arc had [[Popeye]] and friends go on a treasure hunt. After braving many dangers, including an encounter with Bluto's crew, they end up in the land of Dooma. There, gold is so common that its used as building material. The local ruler allows Popeye's pack to take an unneeded pile with them, which is more than enough to solve a country's financial crisis.
* In ''[[Transformers]]: [[Steampunk|Hearts of Steel]]'', this exchange occurs when the Insecticons pull off a [[Train Job]]:
{{quote|
'''Bombshell''': What could these be worth to anyone? }}
* In the opening to the ''[[Lucky Luke]]'' adventure "In the Shadow of the Derricks", the locals are severely upset about the overabundance of "worthless" oil deposits in the area, since it makes farming difficult and water undrinkable. Until it's revealed how much it's really worth...
** ''[[wikipedia:
* Toyed with in ''Crystar Crystal Warrior''. As the name implies, the planet Crystallium is up to its armpits in enormous gems and crystals. They're literally as common as rocks, and about as valuable. Buildings are made out of them. Then in one issue, the cast winds up magically transported to the home of [[Doctor Strange]], on Earth, and they're awestruck at the incalculable wealth on display: wooden furniture everywhere and entire shelves full of paper books.
* Element Lad's introduction in ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes]]'' features a Tromian mother chiding her child for turning a lamppost into gold, saying "Gold is soft and useless compared to other metals. Only use your powers for useful things."
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* In ''[[The Smurfs]]'' comic book story "The Finance Smurf", Miner comes across a pile of "worthless yellow rocks" in his mine that he doesn't know what to do with. The title character Smurf decides to use them for minting coins as part of the Smurf Village monetary system. Later on, when the Smurfs abandon that system and return to their old communal ways, it gets used for making musical instruments.
* In the ''[[Ben 10]]'' fanfiction ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3875254/1/Hero_High_Earth_style Hero High: Earth Style]'', Ren has a solid gold picture frame. She
▲== Fanfiction ==
▲* In the ''[[Ben 10]]'' fanfiction [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3875254/1/Hero_High_Earth_style Hero High: Earth Style], Ren has a solid gold picture frame. She laminates the fact that she was surprised how valuable the material was on earth, as it was quite common on her planet.
* In Petty's take on [[Nuzlocke Comics|the Nuzlocke]] ''[[Pokémon]]'' [[Nuzlocke Comics|Challenge]], Barb the Nidoran/rina/queen collects pieces of paper that she finds, which trainer Locke ignores. After Locke has a meltdown, Barb offers to share her "paper collection" with her, and Locke discovers that it contains the SS Anne ticket and the Bike Voucher, which are priceless in the games and to Locke, but just paper to Barb.
* In one chapter of Ellen Brand's ''Personality Conflicts'' series, Ignatz Hills, proprietor of the "Old As The Hills" antique store, sells a glass statue, priced at thirty dollars, to a customer on Christmas Eve. The stranger, who wears a trench coat and fedora (and is actually [[Power Rangers in Space|Ecliptor]], buying a present for Astronoma), pays with a "perfect clear emerald, the size of a fingernail, without flaws". When Hill protests that perfect emeralds are incredibly rare (and far more valuable than the statue he just sold), Ecliptor replies that "Where I come from, they're as common as grains of sand."
== Film ==
* ''[[Greed (film)|Greed]]''. Sure, you got the gold. Too bad you're in the middle of a ''desert'' without any ''water''.
* ''[[Stepsister From Planet Weird]]''. The girl and her dad arrive on Earth, and being aliens, she believes diamonds to be useless, but dad claims they're quite valuable on Earth.
* From ''[[The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 film)|The Day the Earth Stood Still]]'', Klaatu goes around with a pocketful of cut diamonds which function as small change on his planet; he tries to buy things with them on Earth, attracting the attention of the authorities.
* ''[[Madagascar]]: Escape 2 Africa'': when the waterhole dries up, the animals start digging for water, but all they can find is worthless gold and jewels. Subverted by the end; while the African animals don't care about the pile of treasure (and even if they did, you can't drink gold), the ''penguins'' certainly do.
* From ''[[Men in Black (film)|Men in Black]]'', the Arquillian prince known as Rosenberg is a diamond merchant, but most of his species apparently thinks diamonds are only good for amusing children (or possibly ''candy''). It was mostly to emphasize how valuable the [[MacGuffin|galaxy]] was.
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* Heavily averted in ''[[Cowboys and Aliens (film)|Cowboys and Aliens]]'' where the main reason the aliens came to earth was to mine it out for Gold.
* Taken to horrifying conclusions in ''[[Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade]].'' If you drink from one of the many beautiful chalices of life, created with gold, diamonds, and other precious metals, [[Death by Materialism|your age is sped up to the point of death.]] The only true chalice that will grant you immortality is {{spoiler|made of wood or clay, because that's all a carpenter like Jesus would have used.}}
** A more lighthearted Zigzagged example in the same movie; the sultan is unimpressed with the gold and jewels the Nazis offer him, but he ''does'' take a quick liking to their Rolls-Royce Phantom II.
* During the song "Heigh-Ho!" from ''[[Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney film)|Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs]]'', the seven dwarfs apparently own a diamond mine, but when Doc sees a ruby among the harvested diamonds, he immediately gives it to Dopey, who then throws out the unwanted minerals.
* Played with in the original ''[[Dawn of the Dead]]''. When Roger and Peter find a bank in the mall, they stare at a cashbox full of mixed bills, then stare and smile at another cashbox full of wrapped $100 bills. Roger says, "You never know..." before they both fill their pockets with cash. {{spoiler|When the biker gang breaks into the mall, they loot the bank as well.}}
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** Also, Garion, his grandson, is given huge sums of money from his treasury each month and just throws it into a drawer in his bedroom. His wife, a Tolnedra (see above), is horrified. Of course this may be just because he is a king, but it still shows a very strong disregard for money in general.
*** Not necessarily. He might very well have announced he put the money in his bedside drawer on purpose, to get a rise out of Ce'Nedra. It's not like lovers teasing each other are entirely unheard of in Eddings' works ;).
*** He's well aware of the money's value, and it's as safe in his bedroom drawer as anywhere. It's just more than he needs.
** In the David Eddings series ''The Dreamers'', the four gods hire armies with gold, except for Aracia. Queen Trenicia of the Isle of Akalla won't accept gold- she refers to it as 'yellow lead' and took gems as payment instead.
* [[Isaac Asimov]]'s ''Robot City'' series, the robots of the titular city see gold as a very weak metal, and mostly useless. However, seeing as how it never corrupts, they ended up finding a use for it, eating utensils for the humans that visit.
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*** Not that great. Gold's main value in electronics is its resistance to corrosion, as noted by the robots. This is why it's used quite often for plating contacts; no insulating oxide layer will form. However, copper is about 40% more conductive than gold, and silver is better still. That said, silver, copper, and gold ''are'' the top three, at least when only pure elements are considered.
**** It's very necessary in a host of electronic devices. Small wires tarnish very easily, if made of silver or copper, which interrupts the voltage. As such, gold's resistance to oxidation is immensely useful. Most mobile phones will contain about 40 cents of gold for this reason. And a couple cents of platinum too.
** Given that
** Asimov's robots use a "positronic brain" which runs on positrons not electrons. How the hell that might work is never explained but given that, its not much of a hand wave to say that gold isn't a good conductor for positrons.
*** The positronic brain is usually stated to be platinum-iridium alloy.
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** Tsuranuanni is a thinly disguised Japan, which in [[Real Life]] has little iron or other metals. One of the reasons why European armor was metal and Japanese was not, was that Europe had iron.
* One of the very early books of the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]], ''[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Han_Solo_and_the_Lost_Legacy Han Solo and the Lost Legacy]'', involved him and his friends-of-the-book questing after the treasure of a long-perished galactic overlord, only to find that it's a cache of once cutting edge military materiel, immensely valuable at the time, but basically worthless to them, since [[Technology Marches On]].
* In the ''[[Transformers (film)|Transformers]]'' novel ''The Veiled Threat'', Starscream is shown to be bribing terrorists by using his [[Bizarre Alien Biology|internal matter converter]] to produce massive amounts of gold coins. The other Decepticons are baffled that the loyalties of humans can be won by such simple and, from their perspective, worthless bits of metal. They claim that Cybertronians are superior as they only value what is useful for continued functioning, like energon. Considering the behavior of some of the human terrorists within the novel, [[Humans Are
* Similarly, in [[Bruce Coville]]'s ''[[Rod Albright Alien Adventures]]'' series, it's mentioned in the first book that energy credits are galactic society's basic unit of exchange. "Makes more sense than gold," Grakker comments (rather condescendingly) to Rod. "Not much you can do with gold once you've got it."
* In Nick Hornby's ''[[High Fidelity]]'', Rob is contacted by a woman who wants to sell an entire collection of rare and valuable records for a pittance. [[Justified Trope]] in that the woman's husband just left her for his much-younger secretary, and asked his wife to sell the collection to finance his new life with the secretary. She's deliberately trying to short the husband. {{spoiler|Rob can't go through with it in the end.}} See also the [[Real Life]] example below.
** This sequence was done for the movie as well; it didn't make the theatrical version, but is in the deleted scenes on the home releases.
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* In one of Henry Kuttner's stories, a spaceship crew is starving on Venus because gold and silver are too common there, the society is too conservative to buy any of their devices, and the main medium of exchange is iron, which they only have as alloys
* In [[The Sword of Truth]], the Mud People have gold treasuries (and possibly mines) on their territory, but consider it worthless because it's too soft for spears.
* Thomas More's Utopia points out the bad logic of assigning "value" to things just because they're pretty and rare. In Utopia, they have the stuff and use it to trade to the outside world, but within Utopia, it's communally owned and growing attached to it is discouraged. Gold is used for the shackles of slaves and for things like chamber pots, so that it's associated with the shameful and dirty. Precious stones are given to small children to wear and play with, with the understanding that any self-respecting Utopian will quickly grow out of this infantile attachment to the shiny if they want to be taken
* The "disaster situation" applies in the novel ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'': In chapter five, Robinson is stranded on a desert island with no other human being. He needs every tool he can get, things like razors, scissors, knives, and forks are precious, but then he writes: ''I found about Thirty six Pounds value in Money, some European Coin, some Brazil, some Pieces of Eight, some Gold, some Silver. I smil'd to my self at the Sight of this Money, O Drug Said I aloud, what art thou good for, Thou art not worth to me, no not the taking off of the Ground, one of those Knives is worth all this Heap, I have no Manner of use for thee, e'en remain where thou art, and go to the Bottom as a Creature whose Life is not worth saving. However, upon Second Thoughts, I took it away,'' Robinson knows the value, but those treasures are really only worthless yellow rocks if there is not a society to give them value.
* In ''[[The Diamond Age]]'', the most valuable items are [[Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap|things that are handmade]], due to [[Matter Replicator|ready access to nanotechnology]]. Diamond (and anything else that's made of carbon) is basically worthless.
* In the [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]] novel ''Night of the Humans'', Amy is in the far-distant future, and when she learns she's got involved in a treasure hunt she says "Like a chest of gold or something?" Her companions are amused; it's like she's never heard of [[Doctor Who/Recap/S12
* One of [[Keith Laumer]]'s stories had diplomat [[Retief]] make a deal with an alien who could provide amphibious construction workers. The alien said his people were skilled craftsmen, who had to bring along the materials they knew and loved: gold, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and granite. Retief okayed the gold and jewels, but said to hold the granite, and the alien was pleased at his generosity, "accepting the stuff we got a surplus of, and foregoing the rare and expensive granite."
* ''[[The 13 Clocks]]'' featured a woman who was cursed to cry jewels - once word spread about her, people came from far and wide to tell her sad stories and make her cry. Unfortunately, over time she [[Incredibly Lame Pun|flooded]] the economy with jewels and her town collapsed once cobblestones became more valuable than jewelry.
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* In [[Arthur C. Clarke]]'s ''[[The Space Odyssey Series|2010: Odyssey Two]]'', space-entity Dave Bowman peers down into the depths of Jupiter and discovers that its core is a diamond the size of the Earth. In ''2061: Odyssey Three'', it turns out that the stellar ignition of Jupiter at the end of the previous book tossed a few "insignificant chunks" of this core up into orbit, including one mountain-sized hunk that landed on one of the Jovian moons.
* A [[The Bible|Biblical]] example:
{{quote|
** This is either a case of silver being
* ''[[Pippi Longstocking]]'' has piles of gold and zero comprehension of math, so she tends to pay people ''far'' more than the asking price. At one point, she receives change in silver and reacts with disgust: "What would I do with all those nasty little white coins?"
* In ''[[Harry Potter]] And The Goblet Of Fire'', the Ireland Quiddich team mascots are leprechauns that make their entrance throwing gold coins on the audience. However, this trope is [[Inverted Trope|inverted]] when it becomes apparent that the leprechauns had thrown leprechaun gold - which vanishes after a few days. {{spoiler|This puts Ron in an angsty mood since paid Harry back for buying him some binoculars with the gold instead of 'real' money, and is too poor to actually pay him back, and it angers Fred and George when a rather large bet they won was paid in said gold.}}
** Also invoked with portkeys. Almost anything can be made into a portkey, so if someone is making a portkey to leave somewhere outdoors so that someone else can use it later, they often make it out of something seemingly worthless (like an old newspaper or an abandoned shoe or something) so that [[Muggles]] who happen to come along in the mean time won't be tempted to touch it.
* The titular planet from the ''[[New Kashubia Series|New Kashubia]]'' series is rich in every sort of heavy metal, but desperately, desperately shy of lighter elements. Even air and soil had to be shipped in at hideous expense, and though the inhabitants, transported there very much against their will, live in tunnels drilled through solid gold, they're still the poorest people in the galaxy. By the opening of the second book, their economy has improved to the point that they can afford luxuries like clothing, and actual homes.
* In the [[Doc Savage]] novel ''Murder Melody'', the [[Beneath the Earth]] kingdom of Subterranea uses gold for a huge variety of uses as it is the most abdundant and ductile metal available.
* In ''[[Humanx Commonwealth|The End Of The Matter]]'', the incomprehensible alien Abalamahalamatandra sits around idly, playing with its toes and setting stones into circles, while the other characters talk. Naturally, nobody notices that it's using very large gemstones to do so, or that it stumbles in a hole where the priceless archeological treasures two of the speakers had been seeking for months are concealed.
* ''[[The Postman]]'' is set [[After the End]]. The protagonist finds a heavy box in an abandoned house and hopes that it's filled with canned food, ammunition and/or medical supplies and not useless gold hoarded by a short-sighted pre-Apocalypse citizen.
* Most of the societies in [[Alice, Girl from the Future]] are moneyless. One of the stories features Alice looking for a replacement for a 1.5
* Diamonds, rubies, sapphire, and emeralds are all popular building materials in the ''[[Robert Reed|Great Ship]]'' universe. Glass has been replaced by diamond panels, and the other precious gems are used essentially like wallpaper.
* Played with in Phyllis Eisenstein's "The Crystal Tower". The hero, Cray Ormoru, finds himself in a place where gemstones are so common as to be worthless. But when he tries to pay for a drink with a silver coin from his homeland, the proprietress is first suspicious, then unsure what to do when offered something so rare and valuable as silver. She decides to use the coin as jewelry.
== Live-Action TV ==
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* On ''[[ALF]]'', Alf bails the family out of a financial jam by hocking some of the plumbing fixtures on his ship - which are made of platinum (which is more plentiful than iron on Alf's home planet).
* The Diffys from ''[[Phil of the Future]]'' bought their house with a bag of diamonds produced as a waste product of the magnetic bottle containment system on their Time RV. They were going to throw them out. Keeping with both sides of this trope, aluminium foil is apparently extremely valuable in the future.
* In ''[[Star Trek]]'', gold-pressed latinum is a universal currency outside [[The Federation]], which is a [[Mary Suetopia|cashless society]] (though unofficially it's the universal currency ''inside'' the Federation). However, the gold itself is
** Of course, ''[[Star Trek]]'' isn't completely consistent.. there are episodes of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' where gold is of considerable worth to [[Proud Merchant Race|Ferengis]] (chalk it up to [[Early Installment Weirdness]], remember that "gold-pressed latinum" as a ''concept'' didn't exist yet). Also, in an episode of ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'', a group of Ferengi are thrilled when Captain Archer lies to them that he has hundreds of gold bars, but this is only because they assumed he meant gold-pressed latinum, while Archer himself was under the impression the gold itself was valuable.
** The detail that [[Cell Phone|combadges]] use actual gold became useful in "Time's Arrow" when Data went to 19th-century Earth; he was able to use it to make a bet in a game of poker and acquire money. [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|Which frankly isn't fair, as Data is an emotionless android that can count all the cards and has the ultimate poker face]], but as the gamblers were looking to basically take others' money, it works out....
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** In "Elaan of Troyius", the Federation has no idea why the Klingons are so interested in a certain planet inhabited by a low-tech race. When they happen to look at a necklace worn by one of the natives, they discover the "common stones" it is made of happen to be dilithium crystals, which are the source of starship power and highly valuable to space-traveling races.
** In "Catspaw", aliens try to tempt Kirk with a pile of precious jewels. He tells them that he could manufacture a thousand of them on ''Enterprise''.
*** Oddly, in "Arena", [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien
* In ''[[3rd Rock from the Sun]]'', the Solomons think the lottery is just a game, and throw away a winning ticket without realizing it would have made them very rich.
** In another episode, Dick decides to buy a diamond ring, but is horrified when he finds out how expensive diamonds are. His exclamation sums it up: "Where I come from we use the big ones as door stoppers!"
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** This trope was also invoked on the trip through the burning desert, where a drink of water was sold for one gold bar each.
*** Another TOS ''[[Twilight Zone]]'' example: In "Two", the male soldier raids a cash register, realizes that the money is useless because it is [[After the End]], and tosses the coins into the street.
* An episode of ''[[Wonder Woman]]'' dealt with this concept: how do you establish a galactic currency when wildly-varying worlds use gold or steel or ''wood''. The rather [[
* Present day variant: in the ''[[Lost]]'' episode "Expose," Nikki and Paolo essentially [[Death by Materialism|die because of some diamonds]]. When Sawyer finds the diamonds, he and others (including Sun and Hurley) decide they're worthless on the island and scatter them in the grave. This is horribly painful to watch once one knows that {{spoiler|Sun and Hurley get off the island about two weeks later}}, not to mention that {{spoiler|Nikki and Paolo are actually paralyzed and are being buried alive.}} This was mostly the Losties being [[Genre Savvy]] enough avert [[Gold Fever]].
** In Hurley's defense, back home he was trying to get rid of the {{spoiler|millions he already had because he believed it was cursed}}.
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* The History Channel TV Show ''Modern Marvels'' had an episode on recycling where the plant manager of a metals recovery firm was displaying to the audience a box containing gray chunks and dust which looked like, well, worthless dirt and rocks, and admitted that's what most people thought it was. You'd be surprised to discover that the box contained ''two and one-half million U.S. dollars'' worth of recycled platinum.
* In the NBC's ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]'' mini-series, the Houyhnhnms are puzzled as to why the Yahoos love certain common rocks (actually gigantic diamonds), Gulliver explaining that "primitive creatures love shiny things." In secret, he collects some for himself to sell in England only to throw them away when he decides to stay with the Houyhnhnms.
* Played with in the reimagined ''[[Battlestar Galactica
* In one episode of ''[[Tales from the Crypt]]'' ("Dead Wait"), the protagonist explores a remote location, searching for a legendary black pearl in the hopes of getting rich. In the end, a local murders him, celebrating that collecting his scalp full of ''red hair'' will increase her status immensely. She notices the pearl, and throws it away like it was trash.
* Gold is as common as dirt on the planet Voga in ''[[Doctor Who]]''. Unfortunately, this makes the Vogans a target for both greedy human prospectors and Cybermen who hope to eliminate a source of weapons against them (gold dust is to Cybermen as silver is to werewolves).
** In "Planet of the Dead", the Doctor has one of the people he's stranded with retrieve a giant yellow crystal suspended in some mundane looking clamps. He then discards the crystal, because the anti-gravity clamps are what he needed.
* In the original ''[[My Favorite Martian (TV)]]'', Tim O'Hara accidentally breaks some ordinary drinking glasses, and Uncle Martin muses that it's a pity because on Mars, objects made from glass are exceptionally valuable.
* In one episode of ''[[Lost in Space]]'', treasure hunters come looking for the treasure of a man from a planet where gold and gems were extraordinarily common. The treasure chests contain objects of aluminum and tin - to a man who had handled gem encrusted gold objects every day of his life, they ''were'' treasure.
* In a segment of ''[[The Daily Show]]'', Aasif Mandvi is explaining how bad the economy is, and what to invest in. When Jon Stewart says, "What about gold?", Aasif replies, "It turns out that gold is just a shiny metal. ''Very'' shiny, but still just metal."▼
* In the old radio show ''[[X Minus One]],'' a protagonist got mixed up in a time-traveling get-rick-quick scheme by going to the past and investing in stocks that would rise and property loaded with a type of mineral that the seller told him had interesting scientific qualities but was basically worthless
==
* Classic urban legend: A jilted wife advertises her ex/absentee/cheating/imprisoned-husbands car for way less than cheap in the newspaper. A youngish man comes to buy the car, typically a cherry 50's-70's pony car or custom muscle car with a Blue Book value that looks like a phone number, for $10. (In some versions, she just wanted to [[It's All Junk|get rid of the reminder]]; in others, [[Idiot Ball|the husband had sent a message asking her to]] [[Revenge|"sell the car and send me the money"]].)▼
* In the ''[[Dragonlance]]'' campaign setting for ''[[Dungeons and Dragons|Dungeons & Dragons]]'', the value of gold dropped sharply [[After the End|after the Cataclysm]]; steel pieces are used where gold pieces would be used in other campaign settings. This made ''very little sense.'' Only a creative GM would stop you from getting rich by buying swords and melting them down.<ref>Long Sword cost: 15 steel pieces. Weight: ~4 lbs. Coin weight: 1/10 lb.</ref>▼
* Then there's the old joke about the rich man who died, and an angel was sent to bring him to Heaven. He bargains with the angel, and its superiors in Heaven, to allow him to bring all his riches with him, which they are against. Eventually, they cave in and allow him one single suitcase and whatever he can fit into it, which after agonized deliberation, he fills with solid gold ingots. After he arrives in heaven, Saint Peter asks what he brought, and the man opens the suitcase. Saint Peter looks at him with a confused expression on his face and asks "You brought PAVEMENT?"▼
** In [[Dark Sun]], though, another campaign setting, this is handled much better -- you can't melt down your swords for (insanely valuable) steel, because of course ''only the god-kings'' (and their trusted lieutenants and so on) could afford a steel sword; most weapons are made of obsidian. The primary currency is ceramic, and is backed by said God-Kings' say-so, not by any inherent value of its material (although more valuable silver, gold, and platinum pieces do exist, they are so valuable that they are almost never used; and nobody would waste what little steel there is on currency, since it is essentially priceless).▼
* A standard old-timey joke involves someone offering his dim-witted friend a choice between "a shiny coin" or "a straggly bit of paper" (usually a £1 coin and a £50 note respectively). The idiot takes the coin of course; if they're feeling subversive, he'll also take the paper "to wrap it up in".▼
* In the ''Midnight'' campaign setting for ''[[Dungeons and Dragons|D&D]]'', from Fantasy Flight Games, gold and gems became useless trinkets after the Dark Lord Isrador conquered the world. Surviving humans and humanoids have reverted to a barter system. The only people who use coins as currency at all are the "Traitor Princes", those who surrendered without a fight; they will commonly give peasants a worthless gold coin when they commandeer goods and services, under the pretense they're "buying" them.▼
** There's also a version of the joke where a bystander takes pity on the dim-wit and points out to him that the piece of paper is worth more than the
* The [[Lizard Folk|Lizardmen]] of ''[[Warhammer]]'' don't understand why humans (and elves and dwarves) are so greedy for gold and jewels. They do value gold however, not for its beauty or rarity but for its long-lasting nature- the ancient tablets of the [[Precursors|Old Ones]] that they will do anything to recover are made from gold.▼
* One more joke/urban legend that's been used multiple times in various media. An elderly man passes away, and his widow begins to wonder how she'll be able to afford to keep their house. Someone comes to help her sort through her
== Tabletop Games ==
▲* In the ''[[Dragonlance]]'' campaign setting for ''[[
▲** In [[Dark Sun]], though, another campaign setting, this is handled much
▲* In the ''Midnight'' campaign setting for ''[[Dungeons
▲* The [[Lizard Folk|Lizardmen]] of ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' don't understand why humans (and elves and dwarves) are so greedy for gold and jewels. They do value gold however, not for its beauty or rarity but for its long-lasting nature- the ancient tablets of the [[Precursors|Old Ones]] that they will do anything to recover are made from gold.
** They ''make their armor'' out of the stuff, or at least the Temple Guard and high-ranking Saurus do. And they don't even give a damn about most of what the other races steal from them; the only stuff they really put any effort into retrieving are their sacred plaques and the relics of the Old Ones.
** As it was best put by a Skink Priest:
{{quote|
** Ogres consider gold innately worthless, because it doesn't make good eating and isn't sturdy enough to make weapons or useful tools out of. They do hoard it... but only because they can "con" other races into giving them "valuable" food and weapons in exchange for "worthless"
== Video Games ==
* In ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]''', the local currency is meat. One adventure in Itznotyerzitz Mine in which you "feel pretty moxious for trading a bunch of worthless rocks for cold, hard meat", those rocks being various diamonds. There also exist "fat stacks of cash" and "pile of gold coins" items, which are [[Vendor Trash|utterly worthless]], only good for trading for a small amount of meat.
** In the same mine, it's possible to convert your "worthless" chunks of diamond into useful chunks of coal. Yay!
** There was a period when the [[Everything
* In the freeware game ''Vinnie's Tomb'', you encounter an Old Queer Snake living on a heap of garbage who has the key to the aforementioned tomb. Understandably, the player will try offering him various items in their inventory, including an enormous diamond you find in that same heap. Waving the diamond in front of him will prompt dialogue along these lines:
{{quote|
Snake: What are you, stupid? Diamonds are worthless! Why do you think it's in the trash? }}
* In ''[[Escape Velocity]]: Nova'', railgun rails and ammunition must be made of, naturally, a material with high conductivity - "something cheap, like copper or gold". One can only theorize that, somewhere in the game's universe, there exists a planet(s) with obscene amounts of the stuff. Metal even seems to have more worth, being a tradable commodity.
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*** Which, as the game has aged and subsequent expansions have inflated the amount of gold in the game economy, have become more and more plentiful and less and less valuable accordingly.
* Late in ''[[Popful Mail]]'', air-headed elf boy Slick is astonished when Mail mentions to him that she needs to find a set of magical orbs to prevent the Overlord from reviving. They're actually powerful artifacts, but Slick thinks of treasure in terms of gold coins and precious jewels, and thus had this to say to her:
{{quote|
* ''[[Fallout]]'':
** In the
** This is obviously a [[Call Back]] to a scene in ''[[Fallout 2]]'' (which switched from the caps of the first game to generic "money"), where you stumble on an enormous heap of bottle caps, which are now worthless.
** Incidentally, in ''[[Fallout 1]]'' the value of the bottlecaps received a good explanation: they were backed up by the ''real'' currency, like banknotes used to be backed up by gold in [[Real Life]]: clean water, the most valuable substance in the wasteland. Though it wasn't JUST the water that made caps valuable. It was also the fact that bottle caps were incapable of being replicated, thus no forgery, and their mineral composition gave them a modicum of worth. Same case with bottle caps in the Capital Wasteland.
{{quote|
▲*** In ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'' a couple more wrinkles are added:
:* That said, every currency can be traded for caps or vice versa at their respective exchange rate from anyone willing to barter with you, regardless of your barter skill.
▲{{quote| Everyone in the game still prefers to deal with caps instead of other currency - only casino cashiers are willing to pay you in NCR dollars or Legion coins.<br />
:* The NCR starts to print paper money backed by gold. Unfortunately, before the game starts the NCR gold reserves are irradiated by the Brotherhood of Steel, so they have to switch back to backing their currency on water. This massively reduces the value of the NCR dollar.
▲That said, every currency can be traded for caps or vice versa at their respective exchange rate from anyone willing to barter with you, regardless of your barter skill.<br />
:* The Legion mints its own money system of gold and silver coins which end up having a higher value than NCR currency or bottlecaps, owing to actually being made from said metals.
▲The NCR starts to print paper money backed by gold. Unfortunately, before the game starts the NCR gold reserves are irradiated by the Brotherhood of Steel, so they have to switch back to backing their currency on water. This massively reduces the value of the NCR dollar. <br />
:* Someone in the game gives you a quest to destroy a bottlecap press located in a pre-war soda factory, noting that a supply of newly pressed "counterfeit" caps will
▲The Legion mints its own money system of gold and silver coins which end up having a higher value than NCR currency or bottlecaps, owing to actually being made from said metals. <br />
▲Someone in the game gives you a quest to destroy a bottlecap press located in a pre-war soda factory, noting that a supply of newly pressed "counterfeit" caps will destablize the economy. (Unfortunately, you aren't given a chance to use the press before destroying it.)<br />
In the ''Dead Money'' expansion, you can come across gold ingots - these weigh 35 pounds and are valued at 10,349 caps. This means that many items (like fully-repaired rifles and energy weapons) are worth ''more'' than their weight in gold. }}
* The MMORPG ''[[
** The Villagers in Tai Bwo Wannai on Karamja consider gold to be not worth much, due to how much of it there is on Karamja, but find some plants to be useful as currency. The [[Tz Haar]] also find gold useless, because the volcano they live in is hot enough that it melts (curiously, the temperature seems only to make gold worthless in [[Tz Haar]] city, burn paper, and make Rum vanish, and not effect anything else), so they use bits of obsidian as currency.
** Played much more literally in the in-game world
* "To Brother Gil - Bro, I found the sword, like you told me. But there were two. One of 'em had a lame name, Something II. It was a dingy, old thing with flashy decorations, something you'd probably like. So I went with [[Joke Item|Excalipur]]. I'll be back after I find the Tin Armor." - note from Enkido found when the player obtains the Excalibur II, the [[Infinity+1 Sword|best weapon]] in ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]''.
* In ''Frontier:: [[Elite]] II'' there were some worlds that had rather unusual notions of waste. One, Cemeiss, would pay traders a small sum to remove gemstones and a rather larger one to remove precious metals from their worlds. Woe betide anyone who brought any such materials into the Cemeiss system... they'd be promptly fined for smuggling waste.
* One sidequest in ''[[Morrowind]]'' has you running messages between two exceptionally stupid Orcs in and around the town of Caldera. Your reward for your hassle? A "useless rock"
* In ''[[Ultima VI]]'', if you sell the contents of a mostly useless reference book from the Lycaeum through the Xorinite wisps (an interdimensional [[Hive Mind]] [[Information Broker]]), they will genuinely assume you'll want an equal amount of information in return from the buyer, and are baffled when you accept the initial offer of a small amount of valuable metals. Which is to say, all the gold your whole party can carry.
* At the beginning of the ''[[Left 4 Dead]] 2'' campaign Dark Carnival, you come across a campfire in the middle of the road full of burnt dollar bills.
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** At the same time, the trope is averted, however; diamonds are the rarest item in the game, and can be crafted into the strongest armor and tools available. And a record player.
** An update made it that gold tools now mine faster than diamond, Still fragile like a twig.
*** And the Gold Pickaxe still counts as though it were Wood for purposes of what it can harvest, so some things will take a long time to dig with it and won't give you an
** And, in further aversion, its conductivity makes gold an essential ingredient in newly-introduced Booster Rails, which can speed up or slow down mine carts.
* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' players consider gold mainly useful for [[
** Rarely, though, a weaponsmith in a Strange Mood can produce a golden warhammer, which is worth its weight in... well...
** Platinum has a lot of the same problems as gold, and also makes a bitchin' warhammer if a weaponsmith in a Mood grabs some.
** Silver, on the other hand, can be forged deliberately into
** For non-hammer weapons and armor, [[Boring Yet Practical|steel and bronze]] are the best... {{spoiler|unless you can get [[Unobtanium|adamantine]], but then you risk opening up a whole other can of worms...}}
* [[
* At one point in [[The Longest Journey]], protagonist April Ryan can attempt to buy something in an Arcadian marketplace using her gold ring, only to be informed by the merchant that gold is worthless there - the precious metal of choice in Arcadia is iron.
* In [[Tales of the Drunken Paladin]], Save Hobos find gold worthless and build their slum sector out of it.
== Web Comics ==
* In ''[[Freefall]]'', two supporting characters are looking for Sam because he scammed a 50
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20130308063648/http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1500/fc01404.htm Later on] Florence meets a group of robot student tailors that use gold cloth, silver thread, and lots of gems. Organic cloth is rather expensive after all.
** [http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1300/fv01252.htm This one] explains the trope perfectly (as well as the basis of economic trade in every time period or world ever).
* In ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]'', aliens can synthesize gold very easily. This is sometimes used to pay for repairs to Bob's repeatedly destroyed roof.
* ''[[The
* X in ''[[A Magical Roommate]]'' exploits this trope by paying her entrance into a magical university with aluminium. She also apparently plans to profit off platinum...
** [[Justified Trope|It makes sense]], though. See real-world examples below.
* Mentioned in ''[[8-
{{quote|
* ''[[Dragon Mango]]'': The goblin king refuses a sack of gold and [http://www.dragon-mango.com/comic/chapter04/dm04-78.htm demands something useful like a chicken or a box of donuts], saying that they have literally whole walls made of the that "worthless gold". War is averted with a happy ending when the true worth of gold is explained to him (and almost immediately goblins are reclassified from monsters to people by surrounding nations)
* In ''[[Homestuck]]'', currency in the form of "Boondollars" are awarded to the players (the children and the trolls) for advancing on their echeladder and doing sidequests. It is pretty much regarded as worthless, and considered "useless bullshit money" by Dave.
** {{color|#e00707|TG: alright well its not like i even have a problem parting with this useless bullshit money}}
** This may not be entirely
** Jane has an item that converts whatever she wants into grist, at the price of a few boonbucks. However, since she has no idea what grist is supposed to be used for, she considers the item completely useless. Similarly, she already has a fortune in boondollars and a fetch modus which lists the alchemy components of items, but she has no idea that they'll have something of a use in the near future.
* Discussed in ''[[Dubious Company]]''. [[Professional Gambler|Sal and Leeroy]] win a [[Born Lucky|presumably]] large fortune at the [[Dances and Balls|Festival of Veils]]. While excited about their winnings, they decide to [[Pet the Dog|give it up]] as the Elvish currency would be worthless in whatever [[Alternate Dimension|dimension]] they would end up in next.
* Gold is {{spoiler|worthless}} to [[Drowtales|Drow]] for two logical reasons. Drow living underground come across gold way more often than anyone else, making it a very common metal. It also cannot be used for weapons and armor due to it's physical properties, and can not hold mana, so it's only purpose is decoration. Fossilized tree sap on the other hand (which are literally worthless yellow rocks for people on the surface), appear to be extremely valuable.
== Western Animation ==
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*** Said diamond likely came with the $300 burglar's tools Bender bought with his tax refund. If so then it had to be worth less than $300, and thus less than the $10,000 cigar.
** From the same episode, Dr. Zoidberg tries to spend his $300 tax refund on luxury goods but dismisses them as junk:
{{quote|
** Another example is when the Planet Express team is traveling cross-country in an old Volkswagon van (which still runs somehow, even after being buried for 1,000+ years). Having ruined most of their money in the washing machine, they're desperate for some food. Zoidberg then coughs up blue-and-pink-swirled pearls, which he thinks are disgusting (because he did literally vomit them out), but Leela finds them beautiful...and so do many other people, as she's able to sell necklaces and bracelets made from Zoidberg's pearls.
* On ''Rocky and the Dodos'', Rocky, Tantra, and Elvis dismiss gold coins they find with a metal detector, as they thought that it would help them find Limpets.
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** In another episode, Martin's mother almost sells the original handwritten script of ''Star Wars'' ([[Alternate Ending]]: Chewbacca is Luke's father!) to the Comic Book Guy for 5$.
*** Inverted when Marge brings to [[John Waters]] what she thinks is an antique Civil War soldier statue, but is just a bottle of Johnny Reb whiskey.
{{quote|
** In "The Burns and the Bees", Prof. Frink uses a perfume to attract bees. Moments after using it, a incredibly sexy woman walks up to him begging him to marry her and she will support him for life. Frink only states that she isn't a bee, deems the perfume useless and throws it away.
* Sorta-kinda done on ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'', in the episode "Idiot Box." The episode begins with the titular character buying a humongous flat-screen television, only to throw it away. It's quickly revealed that he actually bought it for the cardboard box it was packed in.
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** Cheetara did keep some of it because it was pretty though. The rest got dumped.
* In a few ''[[Looney Tunes]]'' shorts, [[Bugs Bunny/Characters|Bugs Bunny]] or some other character will be in trouble because he has a bunch of "funny yellow rocks" on his person and villains like Yosemite Sam or Blacque Jacque Shellacque find out.
** In at least one instance, they ''are'' just
* ''[[Megas XLR]]'' "Battle Royale" In Space, Jamie's pocket lint is more valuable than his two coins.
* Spoofed on ''[[Duck Dodgers]]''. The Eager Young Space Cadet claims that "Diamonds haven't been valuable for centuries. Ever since we realized they're nothing but shiny rocks."
* ''[[Timon and Pumbaa]]'': Timon and Pumba initally regard the gold they found as worthless, until a nearby criminal reminds them that they can use it to buy bugs to eat. They even call them useless yellow rocks.
* In one episode of ''[[Garfield and Friends]]'', Garfield finds himself in a hidden city filled with smurf-like people who regard food (such as the lasagna they stole from him, which began the whole episode) as money, and money as food.
* One episode of [[The Fairly
{{quote|
'''Cosmo:''' Eh? Let me guess, ''another'' Holy Grail? ''(rolls eyes)'' }}
* [[The Penguins of Madagascar|King Julien]] went to the Lost Stuff box to find something funny or entertaining. Tossing aside a bunch of dollar bills and a huge gold collar
{{quote|
* On ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'', Beezy bribes Heloise with a box filled with gold. She happily accepts it...so she can have [[Kids Prefer Boxes|the box it comes in]].
* Roger the alien from ''[[American Dad]]'' excretes [[Solid Gold Poop|gold inlaid with jewels as feces]] and doesn't recognize its value on Earth.
** Which kind of raises some questions since he's shown spazing over various pieces of jewelry and having lived long enough on the planet to know what platinum is.
* In ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' pre-cut gems can be dug up practically anywhere, as such they're mostly used as sequins on dresses or dragon chow.
** Although it does make sense that one wouldn't assign much monetary value to a thing dragons like to eat...
*** Actually, it ''would'' make sense that they would assign value to food. Salt used to be used as a standard of currency, which is where we get the expression "Not worth its weight in salt." Plus, as a food item, it could command value, similar to how Applejack sells her apples for bits. Overabundence of supply and limited demand for gemstones is most likely the reason why gems aren't used as currency.
**** That, and the fact that nobody trades or interacts with dragons. Spike is the only Dragon to have actually been raised in Pony Society - they don't have value as trade items with dragons as there is no opportunity '''to''' trade with dragons.
* In ''[[Freakazoid!]]'', Jeepers created a watch that could turn beavers into gold. But there's very little call for gold beavers, so he ends up with a closet full of them.
* An episode of the ''[[Krazy Kat]]'' animated series revolved around Krazy being [[Born Lucky]]. For instance, after getting violently ejected through a ceiling, she finds a cache of paper money and is delighted--"more pictures of presidents for my collection". She then examines a hundred-dollar bill and remarks "Oh, phooey, Thomas Jefferson. I already got him."
* One episode of ''[[Johnny Bravo]]'' involved a cat burglar in a museum trying to steal the world's largest cut piece of cubic zirconia, a cheap diamond substitute. When trying to remove it from its case, she discovers she can't break through it because it wasn't made of glass like she thought:
{{quote|
* The ''[[Rocky and Bullwinkle|Fractured Fairy Tales]]'' version of King Midas encounters this when, in an attempt to improve his public image, gives himself the "Golden Touch" (actually just discreetly painting objects gold). His subjects clamor to the castle to get various objects turned gold, but they do it so much that gold eventually becomes worthless to them. The kingdom shifts from the gold standard to
* One ''[[Underdog]]'' cartoon features an alien race called Cloud Men, who have so much gold they make furniture out of it. It's worthless to them; what they really need is silver (because all clouds [[Literal Metaphor| need a silver lining]]) so they steal it from other planets. Eventually, Polly convinces them to ''trade'' their gold for silver, which they apparently never considered.
* The very first scene with Eda in ''[[The Owl House]]'' has her going through the stuff she had Owlbert steal from the human world; she discards a golden chalice, a diamond ring, and Lutz's mobile phone (the reason Lutz followed Owlbert) as "garbage", while viewing a pair of novelty gag-glasses as a valuable artifact. Or rather, something she [[Snake Oil Salesman|can sucker customers into paying for.]]
* ''[[Duck Tales]]'',
** In an episode of the original show, Scrooge and a member of the Status Seekers Club want a rare mask from the king of a tropical island that would make either of them president of the club. They both offer the king expensive jewelry and other fancy gifts, but he just laughs and tells them he has no need for such trinkets. Eventually, Mrs. Beakley is able to get him to trade the mask for something he actually wants — [[Food as Bribe| a simple jar of peanut butter.]]
▲* In a segment of ''[[The Daily Show]]'', Aasif Mandvi is explaining how bad the economy is, and what to invest in. When Jon Stewart says, "What about gold?", Aasif replies, "It turns out that gold is just a shiny metal. ''Very'' shiny, but still just metal."
** In another episode, Scrooge finds an aquatic race who regard shipwreck treasure as worthless garbage and keep it in a landfill. When Scrooge takes it all to the surface, they curse him for stealing — but then they realize he essentially just took out their garbage for them and did them a favor.
▲* Classic urban legend: A jilted wife advertises her ex/absentee/cheating/imprisoned-husbands car for way less than cheap in the newspaper. A youngish man comes to buy the car, typically a cherry 50's-70's pony car or custom muscle car with a Blue Book value that looks like a phone number, for $10. (In some versions, she just wanted to [[It's All Junk|get rid of the reminder]]; in others, [[Idiot Ball|the husband had sent a message asking her to]] [[Revenge|"sell the car and send me the money"]].)
▲* Then there's the old joke about the rich man who died, and an angel was sent to bring him to Heaven. He bargains with the angel, and its superiors in Heaven, to allow him to bring all his riches with him, which they are against. Eventually, they cave in and allow him one single suitcase and whatever he can fit into it, which after agonized deliberation, he fills with solid gold ingots. After he arrives in heaven, Saint Peter asks what he brought, and the man opens the suitcase. Saint Peter looks at him with a confused expression on his face and asks "You brought PAVEMENT?"
▲* A standard old-timey joke involves someone offering his dim-witted friend a choice between "a shiny coin" or "a straggly bit of paper" (usually a £1 coin and a £50 note respectively). The idiot takes the coin of course; if they're feeling subversive, he'll also take the paper "to wrap it up in".
▲** There's also a version of the joke where a bystander takes pity on the dim-wit and points out to him that the piece of paper is worth more than the coin -- to which the supposed dim-wit replies that ''one'' piece of paper is worth more than ''one'' coin, but that as long as he keeps picking the coin, his friend will keep offering him more.
▲* One more joke/urban legend that's been used multiple times in various media. An elderly man passes away, and his widow begins to wonder how she'll be able to afford to keep their house. Someone comes to help her sort through her husbands things, and sees some scraps of paper that the widow is using as bookmarks or wrapping paper otherwise seen as useless. Upon looking a little closer, they realize that those scraps of paper were ''stock certificates,'' and the late husband bought a few hundred shares in some start-up way back in the Seventies that has since turned into IBM or Microsoft, or some other newly blossomed company.
▲* In the old radio show ''X Minus One,'' a protagonist got mixed up in a time-traveling get-rick-quick scheme by going to the past and investing in stocks that would rise and property loaded with a type of mineral that the seller told him had interesting scientific qualities but was basically worthless--uranium.
== Real Life ==
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** The electrical requirements for reducing aluminum are so great, that it's worthwhile to ship bauxite (ore which contains aluminum oxide) to Iceland (where electricity is very cheap) to be refined, and then ship the aluminum back. Or to put it another way, Iceland uses the aluminum refining process as a means to export its electricity. Granted that the alternative method of laying power lines across the North Atlantic would be difficult, but still.
** Emperor Napoleon III of France had a set of plates made from aluminum in the late 1800s. It was such an ostentatious display of wealth that it was only used at state banquets, and then only for the most important guests. Less important guests had to ''settle'' for eating from gold plates. He also commissioned a gold-and-aluminum rattle for his son.
** It should be pointed out that the while aluminum does require a lot of energy to obtain through the current technique of electrolysis, it's still a lot more efficient than earlier processes, which is why the metal was once so expensive and no longer is. To put in into a perspective, aluminum now costs somewhere around $2,000 per ton, while steel is about $500 and titanium, as discussed below, is eleven times more expensive at $4,800 just before the patent expiration.
▲**** Despite titanium rings being all the rage nowadays, be under no illusion they are worth more than your standard 18 karat gold ring. Gold is worth about $35,000,000 per ton. One of a titanium ring's 'special' traits is that they cannot be resized if you gain/lose weight.
** All of the above is ironically an example of [[Aluminum Christmas Trees]] when viewed from a modern perspective.
** Players of ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' will likely be familiar with [[Shown Their Work|the value of pre-industrial aluminum]] (and the usefulness of bauxite, the only lava-proof stone for a long time).
* Titanium (and most purified metals). It is the ninth most common metal on Earth and useful for its incredibly high strength and low weight. Unfortunately it's mostly in the form of titanium oxide which is [[Unobtainium|an absolute bitch]] to concentrate and break down (generally requiring the use of magnesium, something that ''is'' hard to find). Titanium oxide does have a use however, ''in paint''. Most purified metals are worth recycling for similar reasons.
** Look around your bathroom on the ingredients list. Chances are, if it goes on your skin (sunscreen) or hair (hairspray), it'll have titanium dioxide. Titanium is also used in replacement
** An interesting point: because the richest titanium mines were in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc during the [[Cold War]], the American aircraft engineers at the Lockheed Skunkworks literally called the stuff "[[Unobtanium]]".
**
** As if that weren't enough, titanium ''burns'' in open air at about 1200 degrees Celsius, but doesn't melt until 1600-1700 degrees - so trying to melt it in air leaves you with the same titanium oxide you just spent ludicrous amounts to process. It has to be worked in inert gases or in vacuum, which is about as much of a pain as it sounds.
* The nebulae from which stars form have wildly varying compositions. Exploding supernovae "season" embryonic solar system with heavy elements; on the other hand, older "Population II" stars have few elements heavier than lithium. Spectroscopic studies show stars with different elemental ratios than our own sun, and their planets should follow suit.
* Within our own solar system, it has recently been confirmed that Saturn's moon Titan is covered with ''oceans'' of liquid methane and
** But it's still a moon of a freaking different planet, so it is even ''more'' [[
*** Consider this, it takes 60 MJ to get on kilo of matter into space,
*** It's almost like the universe is taunting us.
**** If you thought that was taunting, there are bands of ''alcohol'' in the universe several [https://web.archive.org/web/20131104172941/http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/beercld.htm hundreds of millions of miles long].
{{quote|
* Many's the time a fellow has lamented the fact that years ago his mother threw out his comic book or baseball trading card collection that would today be worth thousands of dollars. Of course, it is the fact that lots of collections were thrown out that makes the surviving collections be worth thousands today in the first place. This reason has actually led to the trope being played completely
** This example doesn't play the trope as straight as it sounds. A lot of these (comics in particular) were the result of "salting the goldmine" type scams. In short: collector plants stories of "mint-condition" comics selling for scads and scads of money, and then turns around and offers their own books at a substantial discount from the reported price, while using mind-bogglingly arbitrary "grading schemes" to keep others out of the con.
* A year or so ago a British man found some old Beatles memorabilia in his attic and sold it for a few quid at a flea market. Turns out it was ''extremely rare'' memorabilia that was actually worth thousands of dollars.
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* A interesting variation occurred with the U.S. gold rush into the Black Hills. Miners were pissed that their sifting machines kept getting clogged with a thick blue powder. An enterprising businessman found a way to filter it out and kept the powder as part of the payment. It turned out that the blue powder was silver in concentrations of nearly 100 times higher than the gold.
* Old infomercials from ''The Franklin Mint'' selling collector's plates of various styles somehow manage to both subvert this trope and play it straight at the same time. The commercial talks about how these plates can be worth lots of money and are of heirloom quality before adding the infamous disclaimer:
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* In the [[Stealth Pun|vein]] of the metal examples above, a surprising number of scrappers will toss off unstripped refrigerators, washers, etc into the tin pile<ref>essentially the mulligan pile</ref> so they can go out and get more to do the same thing; most of these are druggies just out for their next fix who can't be bothered to take the time to actually process the things.
* Silver was often considered more valuable than gold by the ancient Egyptians, because gold was easily obtained from Egypt's southern territories, whereas silver was primarily imported from Asia Minor and the Mesopotamian region. Every time Egypt's relations with its Asiatic rival civilizations went sour, the cost of silver went up.
** Iron as well, although much of that had to do with the fact that iron-smelting and ironworking were unknown until about the 16th-14th centuries BCE, at which point Egypt had ceased to be a Great Power. It hardly helps that unlike gold, iron has endless pragmatic uses, and a therefore much higher demand.
* Speaking of Egypt, medieval Egypt provides a near-literal example of
* [[wikipedia:Euro starter kits|Euro starter kits]] were sets of a few coins totalling around from about 4 to 20 Euros given out before the actual introduction of Euro cash. Many of these were simply the first Euros people spent - and these people are now probably kicking themselves as complete, unopened kits can nowadays be worth ten times their original value as collector items. The record is held by Finnish kits, which are worth forty times the nominal value of their coins.
** As said above with baseball cards, the reason these sets are valuable is because so many were spent in the first place.
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** Wait, wouldn't a ''lower'' gold-to-silver ratio in Tokugawa mean that gold was ''rarer'' there?
*** I think he mean the ratio of value, i.e. gold was worth less relative to silver.
* A [[wikipedia:Carbon planet|hypothetical planet proposed by Some Dude]] (TM) whose top layer is basically just tons of graphite/carbon. This, logically, leads to the conclusion of a planet's entire surface being ''nothing but diamond''. Think of <s>[[Just Think of the Potential|the monetary possibilities]]</s> <s>[[Humans Are
** Obviously, since humans are fragile creatures, nothing from Earth (bar the [[wikipedia:Extremophile|extremophiles]]) could survive on the planet, as it would be high in carbon and low in...everything else.
** Actually, diamond is not stable at pressures akin to the surface of Earth. It's just graphite that has been squished really hard into a different molecular structure. Diamonds, over a period of millions of years, will actually revert back to graphite unless kept under pressure. Unless this planet has some seriously wicked atmospheric pressure, or is some enormous free-floating chunk of solid diamond that broke off something else in recent geological history, a solid carbon planet will have a surface of stable carbon structures, and any diamond will exist where diamonds are stable... diamonds on Earth are thrown up by tectonic activity, and an all-carbon planet probably doesn't have that.
** Why wouldn't it? Any number of things can cause tectonic activity. The most fun thing about a carbon planet, however, would be the hydrocarbon deposits. Tar pits are cool? What about tar oceans? Gasoline seas? [[So Cool Its Awesome]].
*** We actually ''have'' gasoline seas in our own Solar
** I don't have the link, but an episode of Modern Marvels about Carbon mentioned that scientists have found a SUN, that is basically a huge fucking diamond. Given, its a neutron (or electron) star, so it's much smaller than earth, but still.
*** Well, it wouldn't be a neutron star, as those aren't made of carbon (the outer layers would likely be iron, and individual atoms wouldn't exist in the core). A carbon/oxygen white dwarf might qualify (and there are a lot of them), but I'm not sure if carbon at degeneracy pressures really counts as "diamond".
*** Yes, it's a white dwarf star.
** And now there appears to be a planet made of diamond [https://web.archive.org/web/20150924154847/http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/25/us-planet-diamond-idUSTRE77O69A20110825 a mere 4000 light-years away].
** It's been theorized that the gas giant planets could have cores, or layers, where the temperature and pressure has turned the carbon into diamond.
* Historically, [[wikipedia:Amethyst|amethyst]] was one of the [[wikipedia:Cardinal gem|cardinal gems]], along with diamond, ruby, emerald and sapphire. Then enormous deposits were discovered in Brazil, making amethyst the inexpensive semi-precious stone it is today.
** This also happened in the Brazilian region of Minas when it came to diamonds, people in that region used them as an equivalent for chips used for poker, or, more accurately, peanuts being used while cruising aboard a ship. Ironically enough, that's also when the gold was in highest
* In the days before modern refrigeration methods, ice was considered a valuable commodity. A ton of ice was priced at hundreds of dollars while other commodities were being priced in pennies.
** Ice was made worthless by its own popularity. It was only available in limited quantities and at certain times of year, and people wanted refrigeration all the time, leading to the development of the technology.
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* With the possible exception of the magpie, every other species on the planet really does consider gold to be this trope. You can't eat it, mate with it, or build cozy nests out of the stuff, so what's the big deal?
** that's also what north-american indians thought about gold: didn't have a practical application so what were all those crazy white people doing with it? that doesn't mean these indians didn't have money or didn't care about wealth and prestige (as hippies sometimes seem to think), just that their money was made from things like seashells.
* Similar to the aforementioned gold, diamonds have practical uses, like tile cutting blades, but the vast majority of their worth is derived from their status symbol appeal given to them by people who like "worthless shiny rocks". Without this arbitrarily given value diamonds would be a dime a dozen.
** With the technologies for synthesizing diamonds are quickly advancing to produce jewel-grade stones relatively cheaply, we are likely to see a huge price drops within our lifetime, as soon as people get over the diamond cartel propaganda which still tries to pass synthetic jewels off as "fake" despite of having the same exact molecular consistency.
*** there has been 'currency exchange' going on in the world for centuries: buying 'worthless' gold from indians for glass beads and mirrors, european traders buying slaves in western africa with seashells from island in the indian ocean, etc. when a 'primitive culture' got overflown with 'cheap import-money' (f.i. minerals brought over by ship instead of a long land-route) hyperinflation and economic instability would often follow.
* Even perfectly ordinary rocks can fall under this trope if there's a sudden demand for them. White Jurassic slate from Solnhofen, in Bavaria, was just a mundane construction material for roofs and floors until 1796, when lithographic printing was invented and created an insatiable market for the stuff. When printing tech marched on, Solnhofen's slate became just another rock again.
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