Oh, I don't disagree with that. If you're after something that always appreciates in value then no such thing exists--gold is more stable over the long term than a lot of currencies, but it's not a sure thing by any means.
@thorgrim29: Gold isn't just useful because it's pretty and it's a good conductor, it's also incredibly malleable, which makes it useful for some applications you might not think of--for instance, the cockpit windows on Concorde had an incredibly thin layer of gold in them to act as an anti-glare mechanism.