Former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez made headlines when he was charged with accepting bribes—big ones. But it wasn’t just envelopes of cash or fancy trips that raised eyebrows. It was the gold bars. Yes, actual gold bars, like something out of a pirate movie or an old Western. Investigators reportedly found stacks of them in his home. As wild as that sounds, it turns out you and I can buy the same kind of gold bars… at Costco. Right between the multipack of mac and cheese and the 5-gallon bucket of peanut butter.

This strange headline is a great way to open a conversation about money—and not just dollars and cents, but what “money” actually is.

Let’s start with gold itself. Why do people want it? You can’t eat it. You can’t power your house with it. You probably don’t need it for your weekend projects. And yet, it has held value for thousands of years. The main reason? People agree it has value.

That’s really all money is: something that enough people agree can be traded for other things. It works because it’s easier than carrying around chickens or firewood to swap for a pair of shoes. Instead of saying “I’ll give you three goats for your bread,” we now say, “Here’s five bucks.” And we all understand what that means.

Gold caught on long ago as a form of money because it was rare, shiny, and didn’t rust. You could shape it into coins and trust that someone else would accept it as payment. It saved everyone the hassle of direct bartering and gave people a standard to measure things. One gold coin might be worth a cow. Or ten cows, depending on the time and place. But the idea stayed the same—gold was something people trusted to hold value.

But here’s the twist: the gold itself doesn’t make something valuable. What matters is the shared belief about the gold. In that way, it’s not much different from paper money, diamonds, bullets, or even dry beans in a survivalist’s basement. If a group of people agrees that a certain thing has value—and is willing to trade real goods or services for it—then it becomes “money.”

That’s why money works at all. We trust the system around it. The dollar bill in your wallet is just paper with ink. It only buys groceries because we all agree it does. If people stopped trusting that paper (say, because the government printed too much of it), then prices would skyrocket, and the money would buy less. That’s what happens in inflation. You still have the same money—but it takes more of it to get what you want.

The same logic applies to gold. It’s seen as “hard” money because you can’t make more of it on a whim. You have to dig it out of the ground, refine it, and shape it. That’s expensive and takes time. So gold’s supply stays fairly stable, which makes people feel like it’s a safe place to store value—especially when the rest of the world feels shaky.

This is one reason gold bars continue to show up in weird places, like a Costco website or a Senator’s closet. Gold isn’t just shiny metal—it’s a signal. A symbol of wealth that people still believe will hold up, even if everything else falls apart. That belief is strong enough that people will pay real dollars to keep some around, just in case.

Of course, the world has changed. We don’t need gold coins in our pockets to buy lunch. We use digital accounts, credit cards, and even tap our phones. But the basic idea is the same. We’ve just moved from physical forms of trusted value (like gold or shells or metal coins) to ones that are digital or backed by governments. And all of them work because people agree they work.

Still, gold sticks around, especially when people worry about inflation, war, or banking instability. It doesn’t rely on any one country or tech system. It just sits there, not doing much, but still feeling solid. Some investors add gold to their portfolios as a hedge—which is a fancy word for insurance. If the dollar weakens or markets crash, gold often holds steady or goes up in value. Not always. But often enough that it’s earned a reputation.

Right now, gold is trading near historic highs, which reflects both its actual market value and its emotional one. Investors feel safer with it in their vaults or tucked away in a safe, especially when headlines get scary. Will it make you rich? Probably not. But it might help you sleep a little better at night—just like those who quietly stack gold bars behind locked doors or stash a few in their basement next to the canned soup.

In the end, the lesson isn’t about gold itself. It’s about trust. Money, in any form, is just a tool for trading. What gives it power isn’t the metal or the paper—it’s the shared belief that someone else will take it. Whether you’re holding a dollar, a digital coin, or a bar of gold from aisle 14 at Costco, its value depends on something very human: our agreement to play the same game.

And as Senator Menendez reminds us (probably unintentionally), gold’s not just for ancient kings or pirates. It’s still very much in the game today.