Gold

When it comes to all things precious and shiny, people of the Republic tend to stick to the good old, time-proven glimmer of gold. It's good for a lot pretty stuff, because it's so soft that it can't be used for anything else anyway. From coins and gold bars to gold-plated statues, you can find it anywhere in rich houses. There's also a rumour of a golden toilet belonging to a certain fallen prince, but after all that war looting and killing and stuff, it is yet to be discovered.
You can get gold in two (legal) ways: You can mine it from the ground or you can get it from certain rivers in the form of little nuggets.
If you want to mine it from the ground, you need to find a vein. Naturaly, there are deposits of pure gold or gold is mixed in with silver. The process of extracting it, however, can be really damaging to the environment. First, you need to grind the rock and then you put it into acid. As gold cannot be dissolved by acid, it's the easiest way to get it. And then you generally dump the rest, because you need to be able to touch the gold to get it.
There is only one gold mine operating in the Republic as all of the other resources have been depleted during the medieval times. Additionally, there are about five gold-bearing streams left. Majority of the gold gets imported, though.
Gold is used mostly in jewellery, art, sculpture and various architectonic details and for coins and bank deposits of course. Some practitioners use gold as well but there is no single discipline that would require it and could not be replaced with something else. Here in Republic, gold is mostly for show.
Don't confuse gold with pyrite. And don't ask the dwarves about it either, they won't tell you anyway, you nosy human.