Not very recently, but then what has? Gold has however doubled in value in the past 8 years and is now close to an all time high.
As others have said its value is often buoyed by economic uncertainty / risk and we've certainly had a lot of that recently. That said with rates at more sensible levels there are also other, potentially more accessible places to put your money. There's also the potential for some of the risk factors to abate (Ukraine, Gaza) however equally I think we're at the end of a debt-fuelled capitalist / consumptive epoch and reckon that the economic situation has the potential to become unrecognisibly different over coming decades. I think with the end of cheap / free money more value will be assigned to things of actual intrinsic worth, rather than over-inflated pseudo-assets and speculative unicorns.
Personally I view gold as a very long-term, possible SHFT / anti-inflation hedge. IMO short-term speculation is a mug's game; you'll lose on the spread unless there are large swings and you time it perfectly, while the relatively illiquid nature of physical gold makes it cumbersome to trade so not something you want to be doing regularly.
I don't know enough about the worth of items made from gold beyond their base scrap value so would suggest holding plain wafers. Those with more knowledge of coins, jewellery etc might feel differently.
In fact I went in the other week to have a look at that bracelet, but he said he'd lost it in all that clutter. He phoned me the other day saying he'd eventually found it and would I like to have a look at it.
