Gold is a fungible item but it is definitely not money. You can't walk into a supermarket and buy a weeks worth of groceries with it. You can exchange it with someone, possible the store manager, for what he thinks it's worth. This will be far less than the gold market because now he has to find a way to exchange or store it. And the cycle continues.
You can walk into a bank anywhere in the world and convert it into local currency. That's as close to money as you're likely to find.
Edit: I should have said "coin dealer." To the reply below in Cork Ireland - I see you have a convenient merchant in your very town that will be happy to convert gold coins into cash:
I'm not sure what world you're living in, but none of the banks in my (medium-sized middle-American) city buy or sell gold. I have to go to a coin dealer, pawn shop, or one of those "WE BUY GOLD" places. A used guitar would be just as easy to convert to cash.
I'm in Cork, Ireland. Second-largest city in the country.
I'm gonna bet you €10 right now (or an equivalent value of the element of your choice, if you insist) that there's not a bank within 20 miles of here where I can walk in with gold and walk out with cash.
