Why is gold a precious metal?

Gold is precious and valuable because it's shiny, it's rare, it's stable and is hard as well as soft enough to be molded in the desired shape. All these factors combined together to make gold a precious metal. Gold was also been used by our ancestors as a currency and to make ornaments but now its is also used as an investment and a industrial commodities.

There are many other metals which are rarer than gold making them far more expensive than it but are not stable enough to be considered as a precious metal which can be traded as a globally accepted commodity.