"It turns out then, that the reason gold is precious is precisely that it is so chemically uninteresting. Gold's relative inertness means you can create an elaborate golden jaguar and be confident that 1,000 years later it can be found in a museum display case in central London, still in pristine condition."
The metal is abundant enough to create coins but rare enough so that not everyone can produce them. Gold doesn't corrode, providing a sustainable store of value, and humans are physically and emotionally drawn to it. Societies and economies have placed value on gold, thus perpetuating its worth.
Gold has the highest corrosion resistance of all the metals and it is corroded only by a mixture of nitric and hydrocloric acid. Gold is a noble metal because it does not oxidize. The mentioned characteristics are enough to make a very useful and desired metal; thus, a very valuable one
