History WorthlessYellowRocks / VideoGames

** Rarely, though, a weaponsmith in a Strange Mood can produce a golden warhammer, which is worth its weight in... well...
** Platinum has a lot of the same problems as gold but also makes a nice artifact warhammer.

** For non-hammer weapons and armor, [[BoringYetPractical steel and bronze]] are the best... [[spoiler: unless you can get [[{{Unobtanium}} adamantine]], but then you risk opening up [[TheLegionsOfHell a whole other can of worms...]]]]

* A very interesting case showed up in the [[PlayerGeneratedEconomy player market]] of ''VideoGame/DiabloII''. Due to the in-game currency of gold being ridiculously easy to obtain, it didn't take long for any item worth buying from another player to quickly become worth more gold than it was physically possible to carry. Players started using a rare drop as a ''de facto'' currency instead.
** This goes back to the days of ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}} I'', where particularly rare items were used as currency. Because gold could only be handled in stacks of up to 5,000, unique rings, elixirs and the like became a far more fungible currency for items priced at hundreds of thousands. (Of course, since the game was commonly hacked to death and back, there was very little real 'economy'.)
** What makes this even more interesting is that the rare drop item used as currency (The Stone of Jordan, or [=SoJ=]) was originally a very highly sought after ring, so much so that it was duped/hacked to hell and back, leading to a massive supply. When the item was later nerfed to counter all the hacking, it lost its intrinsic value and thus the market was full of these essentially worthless, but still hard to come by (legitimately) items. Hence their adoption as currency.

* ''VideoGame/PartyAnimals'' ended up developing this problem early-on with its non-monetary in-game currency, Cookies.[[note]]Cookies are earned in-game, but can also be purchased with Nemo Bucks. They can be used to acquire the more common skins, and sometimes for IP Collab skins.[[/note]] Initially, the game would only give out 3,000 Cookies at any level-up beyond Level 100, with no limit. So quite a few players quickly ended up with millions and millions of Cookies...and ran out of things to spend them on. The game was later modified to limit it to two level-ups per day beyond Level 100, and instead give out a Mystery Box each time that could yield Cookies (1,500-5,000), Nemo Bucks[[note]]A different currency that, in addition to being earnable in-game, can also be purchased.[[/note]] (200-600), or Egg Coins[[note]]Tokens for a Gatcha game that will yield skins, and could win super-rare Legendary skins; they can be earned, or purchased with Nemo Bucks.[[/note]] (1-3).

* ''VideoGame/PartyAnimals'' ended up developing this problem early-on with its non-monetary in-game currency, Cookies. Initially, the game would only give out 3,000 Cookies at any level-up beyond Level 100, with no limit. So quite a few players quickly ended up with millions and millions of Cookies...and ran out of things to spend them on. The game was later modified to limit it to two level-ups per day beyond Level 100, and instead give out a Mystery Box each time that could yield Cookies (1,500-5,000), Nemo Bucks[[note]]A different currency that, in addition to being earnable in-game, can also be purchased.[[/note]] (200-600), or Egg Coins[[note]]Tokens for a Gatcha game that will yield skins, and could win super-rare Legendary skins; they can be earned, or purchased with Nemo Bucks.[[/note]] (1-3).

** In ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOracleGames The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons]]'', a Subrosan can be seen tossing items into a volcano because he likes the resulting explosions. These are items that Link would typically spend lots of money or go on sidequests for, like Gasha Seeds or Pieces of Heart; too bad for the player, you can't get them from him. Also, the Subrosan market sells items Link would find useful for relatively small numbers of Ore Chunks, with an implication that they don't know what some of those items are (they refer to a Piece of Heart as a "Peach Stone" and put it on the counter upside-down.)

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' Universe:

* ''VideoGame/AHatInTime'': In the Nyakuza Metro DLC, whenever Hat Kid finds a [[MacGuffin Time Piece]], it's taken away by The Emperess and she pays Hat Kid with a big stack of cash. Of course, the Time Pieces are the fuel to Hat Kid's ship, so it's understandable that she would rather have them. In her diary entries she expresses confusion at being given paper that "smells like car fur". All the money you get stays in a big pile in Hat Kid's ship and she only uses it to roll around on it.

* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'':
** The local currency is meat, as a play on the MoneySpider trope. Items like the "dollar-sign bag" and "pile of gold coins" are utterly worthless and only good for selling from your inventory for a small amount of meat.
** Diamonds in particular are said to be so common that they're essentially worthless, hence why their selling price is set a paltry 5 meat. There used to even be an 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.
*** In the same mine, it's possible to convert your "worthless" chunks of diamond into useful chunks of coal. Yay!
** 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 [[TheMafia Penguin Mafia]] would accept stacks of cash in exchange for crates of Crimbo goodies, temporarily making them quite valuable.
* In the freeware game ''Vinnie's Tomb'', you encounter an Old Queer Snake living on a heap of garbage who has the key to the aforementioned tomb. Understandably, the player will try offering him various items in their inventory, including an enormous diamond you find in that same heap. Waving the diamond in front of him will prompt dialogue along these lines:
-->'''Vinnie:''' Will you trade me the key for this diamond?\\
'''Snake:''' What are you, stupid? Diamonds are worthless! Why do you think it's in the trash?

* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'':
** Inverted with a silly quote for female Draenei, a member of a race of interdimensional refugees: "This planet has a tremendous supply of sandstone. The inhabitants must be wealthy beyond their dreams!"
** Another example appears in several instances. One example would be Uldaman. At the end of the instance, the group would find a chest of one or two gear pieces that they take. However, your avatar seems to ignore the fact that there's large piles of gold right next to the chest. Perhaps the ultimate example is Utgarde Pinnacle, where the ''very first room'' is the ''treasury''. Players have found a use for it though. If you take a detour across the piles of gold you can skip the first encounter! That said, there's a good reason for this -- the gold is cursed. The skeletons tending to it are the former companions of the drunken dwarf hanging out by the entrance. So taking any of that stuff is a bad, bad idea.
** This even applies to the main unit of currency in ''World of Warcraft'', gold coins. As the game has aged and subsequent expansions have inflated the amount of gold in the game economy, they have become more and more plentiful, and consequently less and less valuable.
** It's played completely straight with the gold you mine, which cannot be converted into coins except by selling it (apparently nobody thought a mint was a good idea) and has relatively few uses in crafting items, most of which aren't all that good even for appropriate-level characters.
** The people from Sporeggar do consider the use of coins weird. If you want to buy anything from them you have to do so in shiny mushrooms called Glowcaps.
* Late in ''VideoGame/PopfulMail'', air-headed elf boy Slick is astonished when Mail mentions to him that she needs to find a set of magical orbs to prevent the Overlord from reviving. They're actually powerful artifacts, but Slick thinks of treasure in terms of gold coins and precious jewels and tells her that he wouldn't bother to pick them up if he saw them.

* The MMORPG ''VideoGame/{{Runescape}}'' 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).
** The Villagers in Tai Bwo Wannai on Karamja consider gold to be not worth much, due to how much of it there is on Karamja, but find some plants to be useful as currency. The [=TzHaar=] also find gold useless, because the volcano they live in is hot enough that it melts (curiously, the temperature seems only to make gold worthless in [=TzHaar=] city, burn paper, and make Rum vanish, and not affect anything else), so they use bits of obsidian as currency.
** Played much more literally in the in-game world economy -- 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.
** Similarly, most of the tradable gemstones in the game are nearly worthless because of how common they are. They are cheap enough that they are used for making tips for enchanted crossbow bolts. Only the very rare high level gems, such as the Onyx, which is not a particiarly valueable gem in real life, are worth anything significant.

* In ''Frontier: VideoGame/{{Elite}} II'' there were some worlds that had rather unusual notions of waste. One, Cemeiss, would pay traders a small sum to remove gemstones and a rather larger one to remove precious metals from their worlds. Woe betide anyone who brought any such materials into the Cemeiss system... they'd be promptly fined for smuggling waste.
* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'':
** One sidequest has you running messages between two exceptionally stupid Orcs in and around the mining town of Caldera. Your reward for your hassle? A "useless rock" -- which happens to be a diamond. The orc thinks he's pretty clever conning you.
** The [[NobleSavage Ashlanders]] firmly consider gold coins to be this. That doesn't mean they won't take them off your hands, however. After all, you aren't the only clueless city slicker in the world...
* ''VideoGame/{{Ultima}}'':
** In ''VideoGame/UltimaVI'', if you sell the contents of a mostly useless reference book from the Lycaeum through the Xorinite wisps (an interdimensional HiveMind InformationBroker), they will genuinely assume you'll want an equal amount of information in return from the buyer, and are baffled when you accept the initial offer of a small number of valuable metals. Which is to say, all the gold your whole party can carry.
** ''VideoGame/UltimaVIII'': In the book "Gold: Valuable Commodity or Worthless Trash?", Okapi the Elder argues in favor of gold for its useful properties. The official currency is Obsidians, as metals were deemed more valuable for making crafts and weaponry than to be wasted on being currency.
* At the beginning of the ''VideoGame/Left4Dead2'' campaign Dark Carnival, you come across a campfire in the middle of the road full of burnt dollar bills.
** A similar scene can be seen at the beginning of the Blood Harvest Campaign.

* ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' players consider gold mainly useful for [[UpperClassTwit pacifying nobles]] and making [[ShopFodder jewellery, goblets and so on]] to trade for more practical metals because it's very heavy and holds an edge poorly, making it largely useless for forging weapons and armour. And while it still generates a lot of foreign exchange, that can be [[CursedWithAwesome a very mixed blessing]], as wealthy settlements attract larger and more frequent raids by goblins and other hostiles.
** Rarely, though, a weaponsmith in a Strange Mood can produce a golden warhammer, which is worth its weight in... well...
** Platinum has a lot of the same problems as gold but also makes a nice artifact warhammer.
** Silver, on the other hand, can be forged deliberately into weapons-- but again, is only really good for warhammers, floor spikes, and other weapons that base damage on weight rather than an edge.
** For non-hammer weapons and armor, [[BoringYetPractical steel and bronze]] are the best... [[spoiler: unless you can get [[{{Unobtanium}} adamantine]], but then you risk opening up [[TheLegionsOfHell a whole other can of worms...]]]]
* ''VideoGame/EverQuestII'' 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, [[AttentionDeficitOohShiny 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 [[FridgeLogic 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.)
* At one point in ''VideoGame/TheLongestJourney'', protagonist April Ryan can attempt to buy something in an Arcadian marketplace using her gold ring, only to be informed by the merchant that gold is worthless there--the precious metal of choice in Arcadia is iron.
* In ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheDrunkenPaladin'', Save Hobos find gold worthless and build their slum sector out of it.
* In ''VideoGame/DeadLight'', Randall can pick up a $100 bill. He keeps it because it has a funny drawing over Ben Franklin in pen, saying explicitly that it's worthless.

* While gold or platinum, depending on the world, is still somewhat valuable in ''VideoGame/{{Terraria}}'', by the time you have the means to mine [[{{Unobtanium}} Adamantine]], you'll have more than you know what to do with. Gold/platinum still has some uses not just as decoration and vanity but the ore is a necessary component of Spelunker Potions. A slightly better example is silver/tungsten, which serves as nothing but ShopFodder by the time you beat the first(!) boss as the only other use is for making the respective silver or tungsten bullets which eventually become obsolete by Hardmode as the Arms Dealer starts selling them and you have access to fancier munitions.

* A very interesting case showed up in the [[PlayerGeneratedEconomy player market]] of ''VideoGame/DiabloII''. Due to the in-game currency of gold being ridiculously easy to obtain, it didn't take long for any item worth buying from another player to quickly become worth more gold than it was physically possible to carry. Players started using a rare drop as a ''de facto'' currency instead.
** This goes back to the days of ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}} I'', where particularly rare items were used as currency. Because gold could only be handled in stacks of up to 5,000, unique rings, elixirs and the like became a far more fungible currency for items priced at hundreds of thousands. (Of course, since the game was commonly hacked to death and back, there was very little real 'economy'.)
** What makes this even more interesting is that the rare drop item used as currency (The Stone of Jordan, or [=SoJ=]) was originally a very highly sought after ring, so much so that it was duped/hacked to hell and back, leading to a massive supply. When the item was later nerfed to counter all the hacking, it lost its intrinsic value and thus the market was full of these essentially worthless, but still hard to come by (legitimately) items. Hence their adoption as currency.
* In a comic for ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'', it is revealed that the teams have collected so much money from the [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext money powered robots]] that they use it for everything from chairs, to fueling a fireplace, to stuffing it in ''sandwiches''.

* In ''VideoGame/DuckTales [[VideoGameRemake Remastered]]'', the Terra-Fermian king refers to diamonds as "garbage rocks" and acts as though Scrooge is doing ''him'' a favor by taking them all away. This is likely a reference to their playing with this trope in the Scrooge [=McDuck=] story "Land Beneath The Earth".
-->'''Terra Firmie King''': Diamonds? Oh, you mean garbage rocks! We have no use for garbage rocks. They're hard and sharp, and you can't roll on them at all.
* [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig-zagged]] with the in-game "news" feeds in ''VideoGame/CookieClicker''. The Alchemy Lab is stated to work by transmuting gold into cookies. One "report" states that a defective lab was "found to turn cookies into useless gold." But another remarks that "National gold reserves dwindle as more and more of the precious mineral is turned to cookies."
* ''VideoGame/CivilizationBeyondEarth'': In previous ''Civ'' games, Gold was a major luxury that players would fight wars over. Now, Gold is just a basic resource that gives a minor bonus to culture, industry and energy. [[JustifiedTrope Of course]], [[FridgeBrilliance for someone living in a survival-oriented planetary colony, gold really is a worthless yellow rock that's only really useful for components in electronics]].
* There are bronze, silver and gold coins that can be collected in ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'', though their descriptions make it clear that they're utterly worthless, as [[WeirdCurrency Souls are the currency of choice in Lordran]]. [[spoiler:Luckily, there's an immortal guardian who is willing to give you a fraction of their worth in souls... if only to munch on the coins]].
** [[VideoGame/DarkSoulsII Drangleic]] and [[VideoGame/DarkSoulsIII Lothric]] use similar economies. In ''II'', the room with the Twin Dragonslayers is covered in what appear to be gold coins, which cannot be interacted with in any way, for example.
* ''VideoGame/{{Bloodborne}}'': Money's worthless in Yharnam. Coins, no matter their denomination, are only good as markers.
* After completing a minor quest for a water spirit in the prologue of ''VideoGame/IcewindDale'', she gives you a "grain of sand from the lake's bottom" (a pearl that's worth a decent amount of gold at that point in the game) as a reward because she knows that surface dwellers place value on such things.
* In ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'', the [[EatDirtCheap rock-eating]] Gorons have no interest in gems because they taste bad. So they sell them to other races, who are willing to pay a lot of money for them for some reason the Gorons don't understand, nor do they bother to question.
** However, in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime Ocarina of Time]]'', the food shortage in Goron City became so bad that at least one of them tried to eat the MineralMacGuffin, causing Darunia to take it away.
** In ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOracleGames The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons]]'', a Subrosan can be seen tossing items into a volcano because he likes the resulting explosions. These are items that Link would typically spend lots of money or go on sidequests for, like Gasha Seeds or Pieces of Heart; too bad for the player, you can't get them from him. Also, the Subrosan market sells items Link would find useful for relatively small numbers of Ore Chunks, with an implication that they don't know what some of those items are (they refer to a Piece of Heart as a "Peach Stone" and put it on the counter upside-down.)
* Played straight for one particular character in ''VideoGame/TalesOfMajEyal''. The transmogrification chest will apparently destroy items placed in it and turn them to gold, but the gold is actually a byproduct [[spoiler:of turning the items into energy for the Sher'Tul Fortress. The [[LivingRelic holographic butler]] describes the production of gold as a flaw in the chest's design, as the Sher'Tul thought it was useless. The player never mentions that the world started using gold as a currency long ago.]]
* Bizarrely zig-zagged in ''VideoGame/NierAutomata'', where gold is described as being valuable to humans, but worthless to androids. However, not only is gold a useful component of electronics in real life but even in-game it's a useful crafting ingredient in spite of its flavor text.
* BigEater Lancelot in ''VideoGame/EiyuuSenkiTheWorldConquest'' discovers buried pirate treasure because she was able to smell the food they buried with it. What does she do? Uncover the food and leave the rest of the treasure behind.
* ''VideoGame/GrimDawn'' takes place in a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting, and what's left of humanity has little use for gold. Iron bits are the currency of choice and quests or bounties frequently pay with ingredients for ItemCrafting or components used in the SocketedEquipment. One side-quest has a gang of bandits forcing some villagers to salvage scrap metal for them.
* Orbs in ''VideoGame/Spyro2RiptosRage'' are more or less ''crystallized magic'' spheres that, in sufficient quantity, can power interdimensional portals. [=NPCs=] find them jamming up gears, in pest burrows - just about anywhere, and their bartering value is consistent with that (a chef in Sunny Beach was planning to buy potatoes with one). To be fair, most of these characters live on primitive worlds where orbs' scientific qualities would not be apparent or useful.
* In ''VideoGame/DontStarve'', huge gold nuggets can be found fairly readily among the other rocks in the wilderness. They do have practical use since they can be used to craft tools and other useful things, but many of the stranded characters point out that they can't spend it on anything out there, and at least one of them remarks that they can't eat it. Averted/zig-zagged by the Hamlet DLC, where there are towns with shops, gold itself is much more rare, and there are NPC's who will buy gold from you with the local currency, which you can then in turn buy other things with, including food.
* Breeding a Shiny in any of the mainline ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' games usually involves a great many clutches of non-Shiny Eggs before you find that elusive 1/682. If the parent is a MetalSlime such as Chansey, or just very rare like Mareanie or one of the starters, they usually end up being tossed into Wonder Trade, potentially for some lucky Trainer to receive and raise (assuming they don't get some troll's ComMons.)
** A similar situation can occur with the Starf Berry (at least in generations wherein Berries could be grown.) This berry [[CriticalStatusBuff raises one stat sharply when below 25% HP]], and is only obtained via a winning streak of 100 at the region's respective battle facility, and as such, they're quite rare. However, much like a crop of zucchini, it's very easy to let Berry crops grow out of control, leaving you with an overabundance of Starf Berries. If you obtain something via Wonder Trade and it's holding one of these (or another [[TemporaryOnlineContent event-only berry,]]) this is likely what happened on the owning Trainer's game.
* ''VideoGame/PathOfExile'': Wraeclast is such a DeathWorld that any gold or jewelry that isn't attached to combat equipment or enchanted in some way is automatically considered dead weight and ignored, no matter how much opulent decoration you pass by through the continent's many treasure hoards. Instead, the locals barter with Scrolls Of Identification as the standard unit of currency, enchanting consumables for large bills, and anything that can be used in combat as the main stock.

-->'''The Prepper''': Diamonds aren't worth shite. Bullets, that's the rare mineral now.
* ''VideoGame/GreenHell'': Stranded in the Amazon jungle, the main character stumbles upon an old gold mine and can pick up a sack of gold. It's of no use in the game, and the character comments on how he could have sold it online if were back in civilization.
* A funny variant appears in ''VideoGame/HeroOfTheKingdom III'', in which the miller's son asks the player for a pearl. Pearls are among the most valuable items in the game, but the kid wants to ''play'' with it, like it's a particularly shiny ball. If you collect the toys he's left strewn through the area and return them, he gives back the pearl in exchange, because he's decided that it's utterly boring.
* ''VideoGame/AHatInTime'': In the Nyakuza Metro DLC, whenever Hat Kid finds a [[MacGuffin Time Piece]], it's taken away by The Emperess and she pays Hat Kid with a big stack of cash. Of course, the Time Pieces are the fuel to Hat Kid's ship, so it's understandable that she would rather have them. In her diary entries she expresses confusion at being given paper that "smells like car fur". All the money you get stays in a big pile in Hat Kid's ship and she only uses it to roll around on it.
* One random detail in ''VideoGame/AmongUs'' is that the clogged garbage chute sometimes contains a whole diamond.