Worthless Yellow Rocks: Difference between revisions

[[File:worthless-yellow-rocks_maplerocks maple-story_3894story 3894.png|link=Maple Story|frame|One man's treasure is another's trash.]]

'''[[Ultimate Salesman|Quark]]:''' '''[[Big No|NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!]]'''|''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'', episode ''"Who Mourns for Morn?''"}}

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. (Ironically, aluminiumAluminium actually was more valuable than gold once; see the [[Real Life]] section below.) Of course, given what science knows about the formation of elements, it is highly unlikely that there are any [[City of Gold|solid-gold planets]] out there, no matter how [[Rule of Cool|amazing]] it would be. On the other hand, there ''is'' a giant space-diamond. Probably a whole lot of them.

Not to be confused with [[Green Rocks]]. <ref>''usually''</ref> See also [[All That Glitters]] and [[Commonplace Rare]]. [[Kids Prefer Boxes]] is the G-rated version. Sometimes the species in question [[Solid Gold Poop|has a reason to not care about the shiny yellow rocks]]... A counterpart is [[Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap]]; both can exist in the same work. When video game money is useless because there's nothing to buy with it, that's [[Money for Nothing]].

== Anime and Manga ==

* Taken in all directions in the manga and anime ''[[One Piece]].''* Hidden in the Skypeian island of Upperyard is an entire ''city'' of gold. The natives of Skypeia, where otherwise people live on clouds and there is no natural soil, find the dirt of the originally blue-sea island itself far more valuable than any gold. The arc's [[Big Bad]], [[A God Am I|God Eneru]], ''does'' have a use for the gold. However, it's of no monetary value to him, either. He instead uses its conductive properties to enhance his own [[Shock and Awe|lightning-based powers]]. FinallyOf course, ourthe heroes, the Straw Hat Pirates, ''do'' value the gold for its monetary worth, and make plans to steal what Eneru didn't make off with. The Skypeians actually intend to ''let'' the Straw Hats have all the gold they want in gratitude of the [[Big Bad]]'s defeat, but the Straw Hats (believing they were stealing the gold) misinterpret this as their being caught and run away with only what they were carrying, when they could have gotten far more just by waiting. Notably, this is the only time they've ever actually stolen something (as a crew, anyway, Nami's another story) before or after this point (at least up to Whole Cake Island Arc. They didn't really steal anything then either, I'm just future-proofing this example).

{{quote| '''Dilbert:''' Isn't it odd? Despite how advanced we are, we still rely on rocks for currency.<br />

* In an [[Elseworld|Elseworlds]]s Superman comic book (wherein Superman is British), Superman attempts to pay off all of Britian's national debt by creating bags full of diamond gems from coal by [[Hollywood Science|squeezing it very hard]]. Of course, since, as is pointed out later by the [[Designated Villain|villain]] of the story, diamond's value is based on its rarity, diamonds are now worthless and Superman's act was pointless, even counterproductive, because [[What the Hell, Hero?|they now don't have all the coal he made into diamonds]]. We then get a panel where a poor family attempts to fuel their potbelly stove with diamonds.

{{quote| '''Kickback''': '''[[Bold Inflation|Sheets]]''' of pressed inert plant matter with pictures of humans on them? ([[Expospeak Gag|Read:]] banknotes)<br />

** ''[[wikipedia:Ru%C3%A9eRuée sur lchr(27)l'Oklahoma|Ruée sur l'Oklahoma]]'' has similar problems, with the added complication that the area is a desert and water actually is harder to get than oil at the time. Oil only becomes valuable enough ''after'' the land has been sold back to the Indians.

* 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."

* 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.

* 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.

*** 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.

** Given that Trantorians--inhabitantsTrantorians—inhabitants of the planet-city that's the capital of the Galactic Empire in the Foundation series--stillseries—still get their news via dead-tree media, the robots probably all used vacuum tubes.

* 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 Bastardsthe Real Monsters|they may be right]].

* 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."

* 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 seriously -- soseriously—so if any foreigners ever arrive all pimped out in their most ostentatious jewelry in an attempt to impress the locals, they'll look like overgrown babies.

* 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 E5/E05 Revenge of the Cybermen|Voga]].

{{quote| '''1 Kings 10:21''' : All King Solomon’s goblets were gold, and all the household articles in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon were pure gold. Nothing was made of silver, because silver was considered of little value in Solomon's days.}}

** This is either a case of silver being [[Worthless Yellow Rocks]] (or worthless white rocks, in this case), or a [[Badass Boast]] about the level of Solomon's wealth.

** 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 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 &nbsp;kg gold nugget she took from the school's museum and lost. Since she has plenty of friends, the next day she comes to school with her dad carrying twelve times the required amount.

* 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 worthless -- theworthless—the [[Unobtainium|latinum]] sandwiched within the gold is the source of its value. Ordinary latinum cannot be [[Matter Replicator|replicated]], and because it's liquid at room temperature, it's mixed with the gold to make convenient (and shiny) units of currency. An episode of ''Deep Space 9'' featured Quark falling victim to a con game where he ended up in possession of a large amount of valueless, hollowed out bars of 24k gold. Of course, being the [[Magnificent Bastard|crafty and greedy sonuvabitch]] that he is, the Ferengi promptly subverts this by remembering that ''other'', more primitive races in the galaxy would consider the gold valuable, and tries to convince the guy who got him caught up in the scheme in the first place to help him barter with said races.

*** Oddly, in "Arena", [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]]s put Kirk and the captain of an alien ship unarmed on a planet, where they must fight it out. When he comes across a deposit of diamonds, he notes: "a fortune in precious stones, and I'd give it all up for a hand phaser".

* 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 [[Squick|squickysquick]]y solution that some unethical individuals come up with is using [[Soul Jar|minds sucked out of their original bodies]].

* Played with in the reimagined ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined(2004 TV series)|Battlestar Galactica]]''. Tom Zarek makes a speech about how money has become useless because of the [[EndoftheThe End of the World Asas We Know It]] and attacks people still clinging to such things, including Roslin. Later in the same episode, Starbuck and Apollo arrest a would-be assassin who has a wallet full of banknotes. During interrogation, they rip them one by one while referring to Zarek's earlier speech (the guy claimed he had a lot of money so he needed a gun, but the guy was pro-Zarek and was believed to be in his service, which is why they tore into him like that). Money doesn't completely lose its value in the fleet as the show goes on, but barter is important.

* 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.

== TabletopRecorded RPGand Stand Up Comedy ==

{{quote| ''Why do they always want gold? What do they do with it? Do they'' eat ''it?''}}

** 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" gold -- althoughgold—although Greasus Goldtooth seems to have found another use; paying people on the other side to suffer a spontaneous outbreak of incompetence.

** There was a period when the [[Everything Is's Better Withwith Penguins|Penguin]] [[The Mafia|Mafia]] would accept stacks of cash in exchange for crates of Crimbo goodies, temporarily making them quite valuable.

{{quote| Vinnie: Will you trade me the key for this diamond?<br />

{{quote| "''ORBS?'' What good are dumb old ''orbs''? If I saw one, I'd probably just pass by."}}

** In the ''[[Fallout]]''whole Universefranchise, bottle caps are generally used for currency. In ''[[Fallout 3]]'', the player can find stacks of pre-War Money, and while they're not totally worthless, they're considered no different than any other [[Vendor Trash]] item.

** 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.

***:* Considering the ''weight'' of Pre-War money, bottlecaps, denarii, NCR dollars, and Sierra Madre Cash is 0, it's all ''infinitely'' more valuable than its weight in gold.

* The MMORPG ''[[RunescapeRuneScape]]'' sometimes did this, along with other self-parody. In one quest, there is a cutscene of the Trolls killing an adventurer and discarding the 'worthless' red metal he was wearing (the most expensive set of armor in the game at the time).

** Played much more literally in the in-game world economy -- goldeconomy—gold and silver are only used in the Crafting skill, and as such, gold and silver ores and bars are worth far less than mere ''iron ore''. Items made out of gold or silver, if they don't include gems, are generally worth even ''less'' than the ores and bars, if only because no more experience can come out of processing them.

* 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" -- which—which happens to be a diamond. The orc thinks he's pretty clever conning you.

*** 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 item -- suchitem—such as any ore except Coal.

* ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' players consider gold mainly useful for [[UpperclassUpper Class Twit|pacifying nobles]] and [[Vendor Trash|buying more useful supplies]], because it's very heavy and cannot hold an edge to save its life.

** Silver, on the other hand, can be forged deliberately into weapons-- butweapons—but again, is only really good for warhammers, floor spikes, and other weapons that base damage on weight rather than an edge.

* [[Ever QuestEverQuest II]] uses gold as part of currency system (100 Copper = 1 Silver. 100 Silver = 1 gold. 100 gold = 1 platinum). However, both Copper and Gold clusters are commonly-found harvesting materials for low level tradeskills. Not too many residents of Norrath actually find gold to be all that valuable (other than goblins, [[Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny|but they like anything shiny]]). Silver clusters, on the other hand, is an exceptionally rare high level harvest that players will pay a lot of platinum to buy, yet [[Fridge Logic|nobody ever thinks about smelting down all the commonly found silver coins to use for other purposes.]] (But that's mostly because they technically can't.)

* In ''[[Freefall]]'', two supporting characters are looking for Sam because he scammed a 50 &nbsp;kg bag of diamonds from them. This is supposed to trick the reader, and subvert the expectation. Diamonds are, of course, dirt cheap in the Freefall future, and someone made them by accident by feeding CO2 instead of argon into the magnetic bottle of a fusion reactor on startup.

** [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.

* ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'': [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0129.html This strip] shows Haley dividing up the party's treasure equally to everyone else, but only taking worthless rocks for herself. Roy catches on and demands the rocks to be split between everyone else with Haley getting none (but a double share of the rest of the treasure). {{spoiler|The trick is, they were actually ordinary, valueless grey rocks, and [[Kansas City Shuffle|Haley just duped the party into giving her more treasure.]]}}

* Mentioned in ''[[8-Bit Theater (Webcomic)|Eight Bit Theater]]''. Even with the threat of Chaos ending the world, Thief is still determined to hoard as much cash as possible. Red Mage and Black Mage point out that when Chaos does rampage, money wouldn't be worth the act of picking it up, as day to day survival will be the only thing anyone cares about. A farmer would be rich because he could make his own food. Thief is naturally horrified.

{{quote| '''Thief:''' Wealth that belongs to those who can ''make'' it? Great Elf in the sky... We must stop this horrible future no matter the cost! So long as cost ''remains'' on the backs of the poor.}}

** This may not be entirely true-- bothtrue—both Aradia and Terezi state, and John later confirms that the Boonbucks are used to purchase 'fraymotifs' which are likely styles of combat. The trolls have apparently all bought the best ones they could, and Dave apparently bought a few offscreen. {{spoiler|It's just that Dave used his time-travel abilities to manipulate the game economy}}.

{{quote| '''Zoidberg:''' ''(after sampling some jewellery)'' I ask for rich guy stuff and you give me shiny pebbles? Bah! I bid you adieu!}}

**:* Zoidberg also did this with food, spitting out expensive caviar and goose liver pate demanding something other than "the garbage parts of the animal".

{{quote| '''John:''' ''(after taking a shot of whiskey from the statue)'' Ah, that'll make your bull run.}}

***:* Fridge logic strikes when you realise that the whisky in that bottle, being bought by her grandmother and kept for decades, would have likely been extremely valuable.

** In at least one instance, they ''are'' just [[Worthless Yellow Rocks]]: Bugs remarks how much fun you can have with some rocks and a can of yellow paint...

* One episode of [[The Fairly Odd ParentsOddParents]] involves Cosmo and Wanda losing their wands on the beach. They end up digging in the sand, turning up all sorts of priceless treasures and discarding them. This is eventually [[Lampshaded]]:

{{quote| '''Wanda:''' Cosmo! I found something!<br />

{{quote| '''Julien''': Paper Trash....Metal Trash....}}

** 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 ''[[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.

{{quote| '''Burgler:''' Rats! The case around it is made of ''pure diamond!'' [[Lampshade Hanging|How ironic.]]}}

* 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 turnips--somethingturnips—something comparatively valuable, but which King Midas doesn't have, making him the poorest person in his own kingdom.

** 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.

** 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 joints -- notjoints—not for its strength, but for being something to which nobody is allergic.

** RecentlyRelatively recently a so-called [[wikipedia:FFC Cambridge process|FFC Cambridge process]] allowed the titanium oxide <ref>actually, most metal (and not -- another proposed application was production of a semiconductor grade silicon) oxides</ref> to be easily and economically smelted to a pure metal by electrolysis, just like the aluminum, promising a huge drop in prices -- titaniumprices—titanium now costs around $22,000 per ton, about ten times more than aluminum. Ironically,The thepatent processwas isfiled patented,in 1998 and, IIRCexpired in 2018, patentwhich holdershould doesncause titanium prices to plummet (thought they'tve licensealready it,been hopingon steep decline as expiration neared). To add insult to reapthe injury, the massiverichest profitstitanium bymines producingare still in Russia, where the metalmain cheaplylocal butproducer, sellingVSMPO itAvisma, still atused the currentold, outrageousslow priceand energy intensive Kroll process, burning a lot of expensive magnesium on the way, but still being ''the largest producer in the world''.

* Within our own solar system, it has recently been confirmed that Saturn's moon Titan is covered with ''oceans'' of liquid methane and ethane -- theethane—the same natural gas we sink drilling platforms deep through the seabed to extract small amounts of.

** But it's still a moon of a freaking different planet, so it is even ''more'' [[Unobtanium|unobtaniumyunobtanium]]y.

*** Consider this, it takes 60 MJ to get on kilo of matter into space, thatsthat's more than you get from burning one kilo of methane at 100% efficiency.

**** 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| Scientists said the cloud, located near the constellation Aquila, contains enough alcohol to make 400 trillion trillion pints of beer.}}

**:* It makes one wonder why the Big Oil haven't already turned into investing in it. It's not that it isn't obtainable, it's just fiendishly expensive, and need a lot of investment to make it affordable.

***:* Complaints of this sort are ignorant in the extreme - put simply, if a company can extract profit out of something, they will. Realize that this is a moon around a planet - by the time we even had the technology to get there we'd almost certainly not need the gas, let alone the cost it would take to go there and bring it back, all for use in domestic cars and energy production? We'll probably have Generation IV nuclear plants by then, so long as political will remains (note: Currently, we mostly have Gen II plants - if we shut down all of them and replaced them with Gen III and then IV once those are completed, we could power the current earth for centuries and produce less waste than we've produced so far.)

* 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 straight -- baseballstraight—baseball card prices drop sharply (even adjusting for age) for cards newer than 1980 or so. The reason for this is that a much larger pool of cards from this era exist because a large number of parents told their kids to store the cards carefully and never play with them as they could be worth a lot of money someday. This is why things like a can of ''[[Halo 3]]'' Mountain Dew Game Fuel is going to be worth a lot. Sure, people store cards, but who ever thought up storing an unopened can of soda? Not too many people.

{{quote| '''Disclaimer''': "Not all collector's plates increase in value - some go down."}}

* Speaking of Egypt, medieval Egypt provides a near-literal example of [[Worthless Yellow Rocks]]. In 1324, Mansa Musa (literally, Emperor Moses) of Mali, a devout [[Useful Notes/Islam|Muslim]], went on pilgrimage to Mecca, passing through Cairo on the way. Now, Mali is gold country, and at the time supplied the Mediterranean with a very large proportion of its gold. Since West African kings since the Ghana Empire had a tradition of taking a cut of every golden ounce, the Mansa of Mali tended to be ''extremely'' rich. So when Mansa Musa went on pilgrimage, besides all manner of little gold items carried by the people in his entourage, he also had with him about 80 camels laden with 300 pounds of gold. Each. When Mansa Musa reached Cairo, he went for a visit to the Sultan, and then down to the ''souk'' (bazaar) to buy souvenirs and such. Unfortunately for the Malians, ''nobody'' in the entourage had any idea what things were supposed to cost in Cairo, and naturally the Cairo merchants fleeced the Malians for every penny they could get. This pumped enough gold into the Egyptian economy to cause ''massive'' inflation, drastically devaluing all gold in Egypt. For the next ten years, gold, while hardly worthless, commanded ''ridiculously'' reduced purchasing power. On the other hand, the Italians doing business in Egypt at the time loved these new prices, since Italy hadn't suffered the same inflation (although everyone in the Mediterranean was affected somewhat).

* 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 Bastardsthe Real Monsters|how Earth would rape it for quick cash]]</s> [[Scenery Porn|how beautiful it would be]]! Like the planet [[Doctor Who|Midnight]], only less pretty! Of course, since there would be so much diamond available, the price/perceived value/worth of it would drastically decline.

*** We actually ''have'' gasoline seas in our own Solar System -- theySystem—they're on the aforementioned Titan, which also have methane/ethane rains and its rocks are made of bitumen, so it's basically Oil: The Planet. And there are ''a lot'' of it, Titan being roughly the size of Mercury, a largest moon in the Solar System (unless overcame by Ganymede...again). The only downside is that it's a friggin ''another planet'', though once the Big Oil start investing in it...

** 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.

** 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 demand--sortdemand—sort of a Latin American Gold Rush.

* 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.

[[Category:WorthlessOne YellowMan's RocksTrash Is Another's Treasure]]