Hierarchy of precious substances
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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 platinum. See gold album. Likewise, credit card companies usually have a "gold card" and a "platinum card"; some have introduced a "titanium card" as a grade even higher than platinum.
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.