Hierarchy of precious substances

In popular culture, sets of precious substances may form hierarchies which express conventional perceived relative value or merit.

Jubilees have a hierarchy of years: golden (50) followed by diamond (60).

Wedding anniversaries extend the jubilee hierarchy with sequences such as silver (25 years) - pearl (30) - gold (50) - diamond (60) - platinum (70).

The measurement of sales of popular music starts high relative to the wedding anniversary scale, concentrating on gold and platimum. See gold album.

Sports events have a well-established convention (introduced into the Olympic tradition at the 1904 Summer Olympics) of a hierarchy of medals: bronze medal - silver medal - gold medal. This presumably echoes conventional coinage systems, in which cheap bronze or copper denominations could aggregate to intermediate silver coins, then to prestige gold money. The archetypal British designations: penny, shilling and pound parallel and reflect this hierarchy.

Ancient Greek mythico-cultural cosmology depicted a decline from a golden age to a silver age followed by an iron age.

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