Hm....I guess I just look at things differently from most people in that respect. Sure, I'd not refuse a find or supply of the stuff, but pretty much one of the least useful elements on the periodic table, if you ask me for anything but decoration.
It's resistant to attack by many chemicals, so a thin electroplated layer on crucibles would be nice, if I'm to be using metal ones (I've crucibles in both ordinary steel, nickel, and carbon, depends what I'm doing with them as to what I use, but I do prefer the carbon ones overall, good hardness, excellent conductivity both thermally and electrically if they are to be connected up as the anode or cathode in an electrolytic cell of some sort, and they can tolerate both very strong acids and bases well, with the exception of really strong oxidizing acids like piranha solution, which oxidizes carbon to CO2, and they can take abuse no metal would, as well as being pretty non-stick, compared to metals, and they don't easily corrode)
Gold...ok, its got an unusual colour for a metal, and can be alloyed with other metals or semimetals like copper, arsenic, platinum group metals, for decorative purposes. Otherwise it's just a heavy, conductive lump that's hard to burn chemically.
And a minor value in certain medicines for rheumatism/arthritis, otherwise it only really has value because society has conspired to set it as a tie to promissory based currency.
Come to think about it, I don't think I've ever had any sort of soft spot for it. As far as jewellery goes, I've always gone for silver, I like the slightly warm yellow tone it has, and the patina on old silver items. Plus it's actually chemically useful too (such as testing for halide ions, as one can a small amount of test solution to a test tube for the assay, and then add silver nitrate, if fluoride, chloride, bromide or iodide are present, a displacement reaction takes place to form the nitrate salt of it's cation plus crashing out insoluble silver halide salts), and useful in some cyanide chemistry, the type of reaction which follows an umpolung type reaction pathway (where the normal polarity of such a reaction is inverted, with respect to electric charge located on atoms, given the difference in hard vs soft nucleophilicity)
