What Will Now Replace Gold? A Payment for Wars, the Jewellery of the Ancients, but Now the World's Most Precious Metal Has Lost Its Sheen

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o be told you were "worth your weight in gold" used to be a tremendous compliment. Now you can't be so sure. Plenty of other things, some quite surprising, command a higher price than gold, per ounce or gram, now that the price of the metal has hit a 20-year low in London. Last week it dropped to $261.20 an ounce after the Bank of England, on the Chancellor's orders, sold off 25 tons of our reserves, making it cheaper than some caviares, 90-year-old whisky, rhino horn, or musk.

While the Chancellor Gordon Brown may have decided that we can sell 415 - out of 715 - tonnes of the Bank of England's gold reserves and replace gold ingots with foreign currency, …