No, but almost all of it's current uses are fully recyclable, and demand for all its uses is a tiny fraction of the availability of gold.
In fact, if it wasn't for gold being used as a "monetary instrument", the cost of gold for all of its uses would be low enough to use a lot more of the gold, which might be a real benefit. But because most of it is hoarded by people who think it has an intrinsic value, the cost is too high for many uses where it could help save little bits of money.
For example, gold is a good conductor and could, if widely used, save a lot of energy if used in high-volume applications. But at 600 bucks an ounce it isn't used for inexpensive stuff.
The analogy with beanie babies is not that they last, but that beanie babies, like gold, had value only because people wanted to possess them for the sole purpose of possessing them.
Because, as I said, investors don't buy gold because they are stocking up to build their own gold-driven lasers -- they own gold in the hopes that over time other people will pay MORE to own gold.
If one day people decided not to own gold, gold would lose most of its value, because the actual uses of gold don't support the price. Just as when people decided not to own beanie babies anymore, the price on the open market dropped to the value for people who actually used them, like my family, as stuffed animals to be played with, not collected and kept in a box.
My favorite beanie story is one day we found some at a yard sale, mostly in the $20+ dollar range. The woman had each beanie in it's own sealed plastic box. I looked at my kids, and said that we didn't keep our beanies in the sealed boxes because they couldn't breathe and would die. My kids of course laughed, but a couple other children nearby started crying about the woman killing her beanie babies.
OK, that wasn't a nice story. My mother had the collection boxes, but she picked beanies she really liked, and still has them. We have over a hundred beanies, but most we got for a buck or less. We do buy them new as well, the cute ones at least.
Platinum is more expensive than gold, do you consider it to be overpriced in the same way? How about diamonds? I personally would not give fifty cents for a truckload of diamonds as far as my own personal use goes, I wear no jewelry of any kind, not even a wedding ring. My wife would like for me to wear one but I can't stand having anything on my hands and I have worked too many years at jobs where rings were not allowed. But I would like to have a few buckets of diamonds to trade for the things I really do value.