History Main / WorthlessYellowRocks

** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' inverted the trope in one episode. In order to get their hands on the formula for some AppliedPhlebotinum, Archer gave an alien merchant a selection of Earth spices, presumably from the kitchen. While spices aren't exactly worthless on Earth (as Trip said, "on our world, [[SeriousBusiness wars were fought over these]]"), Archer could probably have replaced the sample set for about 50 bucks. But to the alien merchant, they were exotic spices from a distant world, which he could probably have sold for significantly more than the value of the formula he traded.

-->-- ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', "Who Mourns for Morn?"

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'': Starting in ''The Next Generation'' (and after some EarlyInstallmentWeirdness), it's established that gold-pressed latinum is the universal currency (in spite of the TheFederation being a cashless society). Because the Alpha Quadrant is largely a PostScarcityEconomy due to {{Matter Replicator}}s, [[{{Unobtainium}} latinum]] is the only thing that has universal intrinsic value, as it cannot be replicated. The substance itself is a liquid at room temperature, so standard coinage is made by sandwiching it in slips, strips or bars of gold. The gold itself is worthless. Gold's fall from grace in Star Trek does have some real-world parallels, see the Real Life section regarding aluminum.

** "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E12WhoMournsForMorn Who Mourns for Morn?]]", the episode of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' whose quote is at the top of this page, involves Quark coming into possession of a large number of gold bars that have had all their latinum extracted, making them worthless (though he does note at the end of the episode that gold does still have some value with some less developed species, presumably the ones without replicators).
** When Quark, Rom, and Nog wind up in the 20th Century in "Little Green Men," Quark considers gold a perfectly good commodity for which to trade with the humans. Although the episode doesn't mention it, this makes sense in context, because he knows it's a time before replicators were invented.
** ''[[Series/StarTrekEnterprise Enterprise]]'' inverted the trope in one episode. In order to get their hands on the formula for some AppliedPhlebotinum, Archer gave an alien merchant a selection of Earth spices, presumably from the kitchen. While spices aren't exactly worthless on Earth (as Trip said, "on our world, [[SeriousBusiness wars were fought over these]]"), Archer could probably have replaced the sample set for about 50 bucks. But to the alien merchant, they were exotic spices from a distant world, which he could probably have sold for significantly more than the value of the formula he traded.
** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' played with this in the episode ''[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS6E5Alice Alice]]''. The crew gets conned into buying a worthless beryllium crystal, but Seven reveals that several nearby races use them for currency, and to the right buyer it's worth an entire ''fleet''. They end up using the crystal to bribe the same guy they bought it from (they weren't going in that direction anyway, so it's not worth it to them to make a detour just to sell it directly).
** A few episodes of ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' play with this trope:
*** 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 that the "common stones" it is made of happen to be [[PowerCrystal dilithium crystals]], which are a key component of starship power generation 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}}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".

* Played with in a ''ComicBook/2000AD'' story where humans travel along with robots to a planet (or moon) which is supposed to be full of gold. Robots in this story are sentient slaves to humans and considered expendable which is important since the planet has a highly corrosive acid rain. The humans discover after they've arrived that most of the crates marked "foodstuffs" are actually full of... rubber ducks. They believe that a labelling robot made a mistake although the truth is obvious to the reader, and made explicit later. They are too far away from any supply base to get more food or get back before they starve to death. The robots find gold, but in very small quantities, and it becomes less and less important to the humans who are starving to death. Only after the last human dies is it revealed that the robots were finding lots of gold all along... and they used it to replace or coat their metal parts because gold is immune to the corrosion of the acid rain.

* Zigzagged in an episode of ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' where Jessie, James and Meowth, digging for water, find only oil. A {{beat}} later they're dancing for joy, but their dreams of wealth are shattered when Meowth points out that their pickaxe broke into an underground pipeline.

** 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.

-->'''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.

** There also exist "fat stacks of cash". You can wave them in front of monsters, but since the currency is meat, all it does is just confuse them. There was a period when the [[EverythingIsBetterWithPenguins Penguin]] [[TheMafia Mafia]] would accept stacks of cash in exchange for crates of Crimbo goodies, temporarily making them quite valuable.

** 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 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 [[EverythingIsBetterWithPenguins Penguin]] [[TheMafia Mafia]] would accept stacks of cash in exchange for crates of Crimbo goodies, temporarily making them quite valuable.

'''Quark:''' [[BigNo NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!]]

* People have been dumb enough, or desperate enough to throw bullion-grade silver and (even rarer) gold coins into circulation, and there's nothing stopping them; an American Silver Eagle, while worth many times more in metal value, has a face value of a dollar; as a result, it's rare, but not unheard of to see people using them to pay for stuff worth far less than a handful of eagles, in some cases leaving some extremely lucky cashiers in their wake, as all they then have to do to retrieve the silver is replace the coins with ordinary currency that equals the same face value as the finds.

* Not necessarily worthless, but rather [[{{Pun}} worth less]]: the gold-to-silver ratio was far lower in Tokugawa Japan than in the Western world at the time, and, as a result, Western traders brought large amounts of silver to Japan and traded it for large amounts gold, nearly ruining the Japanese gold standard.

* The "valuable treasures as common as dirt" variation is OlderThanRadio: In Creator/{{Voltaire}}'s ''Literature/{{Candide}}'' (1759), the title character ends up in El Dorado, the mythical "land of gold". Rubies, emeralds and other precious gems are just rocks there, and Candide sees kids playing with them during their school break. Later the King allows him to leave with a large abundance of these stones, but is perplexed why he wants them.

* Taken in all directions in the manga and anime ''Manga/OnePiece.'' Hidden in the Skypiean island of Upperyard is an entire ''city'' of gold. The natives of Skypiea, 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 BigBad, [[AGodAmI 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 [[ShockAndAwe lightning-based powers]]. Finally, our 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 BigBad'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, [[ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything this is the only time they've ever actually stolen something]] (as a crew, anyway; Nami is another story) before or after this point. The reverse is also seen: rubber doesn't exist in Skypiea, and after Luffy's rubber powers defeat Eneru, it becomes insanely valuable. Thus, Usopp is able to trade rubber bands for dials, which are common to Skypeia but don't exist on the Blue Sea.

** The Spanish Conquistador myth of ''Cibola'', the CityOfGold, was partly based on a tribe in the Amazon where a certain metal was so common that it was used for body paint and inexpensive decorations. Unfortunately, when the Spaniards finally found the tribe they were distressed to learn that the metal in question was platinum, which the natives had fashioned into elaborate jewelry. Frustrated Spaniards worked the Indians to death in the mines looking for gold, only to turn up mounds upon mounds of previously unheard-of platinum. Not knowing how to work the ore, since they had worked the tribe to death in the mines ([[{{RiddleForTheAges}} and later engineers never did figure out how they did it]]), and given that it was so rare back home that it had no resale value, the angry Spaniards called the whole expedition worthless and buried the mounds of platinum ore in slag heaps that later became "lost treasure" more valuable than a city of gold by the 20[[superscript:th]] century, quite literally considering the stuff rubbish.

* Inverted in ''LightNovel/{{Gate}}'' where wyvern scales are considered expensive and valuable commodities by the locals but deemed almost worthless by the JSDF. As the result the refugees were able to freely harvest a lot of them from wyvern carcasses remnants of the defeated Imperial army. The Italica arc was kickstarted when Lelei enlists Itami and Third Recon Squad to escort them to the city where they can find the trader who they can sell those scales to.

Using this with petroleum may constitute a research flub, if a writer assumes its only conceivable function is to fuel modern machines, ignoring its previous uses for waterproofing, oil lamps, etc. and other modern uses like chemical synthesis, including most polymers. Though it's also possible to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel synthesise petroleum]], since it's just a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds.

* Inverted in ''LightNovel/SpiceAndWolf'', which has iron pyrite (also known as ''fool's gold'') suddenly becoming incredibly valuable in one town, mostly due to some economic manipulation among the merchants.

* In ''WesternAnimation/MenInBlack'', the Worm Guys drink coffee all the time because it's a sacred substance on their homeworld that only royalty is allowed to drink. On Earth, millions of gallons of the stuff is brewed daily so people can get through their day.

* Played with in ''Literature/TheGirlWhoOwnedACity''. The local children ''do'' steal money when they raid abandoned supermarkets and buildings for food, but Lisa notes that money isn't any good anymore, since "there's nowhere to spend it".

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E66Two Two]]", the man finds money in a cash register in the ruined city, but discards it since it is worthless in the aftermath of the war that destroyed his civilization.

*** Since Pre-War Money can be scrapped into cloth, and cloth is required to make most furniture (especially beds), you can literally create a bed made out of money. Pre-War money is something of a subversion, though; despite the economy it traded on no longer existing, the stuff is valuable enough to warrant an exchange rate of 1 to 8 with the currency that ''is'' in common use.

* Taken in all directions in the manga and anime ''Manga/OnePiece.'' 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 BigBad, [[AGodAmI 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 [[ShockAndAwe lightning-based powers]]. Finally, our 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 BigBad'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, [[ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything this is the only time they've ever actually stolen something]] (as a crew, anyway; Nami is another story) before or after this point. The reverse is also seen: rubber doesn't exist in Skypeia, and after Luffy's rubber powers defeat Eneru, it becomes insanely valuable. Thus, Usopp is able to trade rubber bands for dials, which are common to Skypeia but don't exist on the Blue Sea.

* In Aesop's Fables, in the "Cock and the Jewel", a cock finds a jewel on the ground. He gives it a speech about how, if the owner had found it, he would have been very happy but the cock just wants Barley Corn.

** "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E12WhoMournsForMorn Who Mourns for Morn?]]", the episode of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' whose quote is at the top of this page, involves Quark coming into possession of a large number of gold bars that have had all their latinum extracted, making them worthless.
** When Quark, Rom, and Nog wind up in the 20th Century in "Little Green Men," Quark considers gold a perfectly good commodity for which to trade with the humans. Although the episode doesn't mention it, this makes sense in context, because he knows it's a time before replicators were invented. And even with replicators, there are species out there without access to them.

* On ''Series/{{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).