You do realize that you are using a tautology (circular reasoning) in your claim, right? According to your analysis, gold is valuable because it is a "precious metal", and is a precious metal because people think it has intrinsic value, which it has because it's a precious metal, and on and on in ever tightening circles;)

Gold is pretty, malleable, and doesn't rust, which makes it a good material for jewelry and some limited industrial purposes. It wouldn't be all that rare if it weren't being hoarded away because of its supposed precious nature.

The ONLY thing that stands between it being a common and relatively inexpensive jewelry material is human belief that for some reason it IS rare and valuable.