Gold has always had a value because it is a real commodity. When it was first used as a way to buy and sell items, and turned into a legal form of currency for both domestic and international use, there was a standard set on the value of that gold, and the face value of it was the same across the board in most cases.
The price of gold has varied throughout the years, hitting many highs and lows as it is invested in, but once the 20th century came along, gold was no longer taken at face value because it had been replaced by the U.S. paper dollar whose value was measured for many years based on the gold standard.
The gold standard was a way to determine the price of gold, as well as the value of other currencies that compared to it. In 1971, the U.S. decided to no longer use that standard to denote the value of a dollar, which caused gold prices to rise increasingly, hitting an all-time high of $850 per ounce in 1980. By 1999, the gold markets had lost much interest in the investing of this precious metal, causing it to drop significantly to less than $253 per ounce, which was a dramatic change. Although investors were greatly affected by this price decrease, people still continue to invest in gold because of its high use in industry, medicine, jewelry and other markets. Fortunately for investors, 2001 saw a new era for gold investing, and created a growth in the market, taking gold back up in price to more than $715 per ounce in 2006 and to an all time high of over $1,000 in March of 2008.