Gold 1

One of the gold formulas.

Gold

Alpha: 1.0
Color: R=1.0 G=0.836 B=0.386
Reflectivity: 1.0
Specularity: 0.75
Hardness: 180
Translucency: 0.50
Ambient: 0.50
Emit: 0.300
Raytracing
Ray Mirror: 0.20
Depth: 2
Fresnel: 0.5
Fac(tor): 2.20

Gold 2

After several hours of experimenting, a beginner alchemist created this better alternative formula:

Gold

Material
Col: R=1.00 G=0.88 B=0.25
Spe: R=1.00 G=1.00 B=1.00
Mir: R=1.00 G=0.88 B=0.25

A: 1.0

Mirror Transp
Ray Mirror: On
RayMir: 0.50

Shaders
[Lambert] Ref: 1.0

[Phong] Spec: 2.0
Hard: 75

Amb: 0.043

Make sure you have "Ray" enabled (Scene (F10) > "Render" box > Ray) or else it won't reflect light.

Looks good with a Sun lamp as a light source

Gold 3

Gold 3 was mentioned as looking more like "Polished Brass" and was moved to the "Brass" Section.

Gold 4

This is also kind of like brass, somewhat old and worn. To tweak it more you could add a brownish color or make the specularity more reddish.

Gold: Click to enlarge

"Material" tab
Color: R 1, G .954, B .392

"Shaders" tab
Reflectivity (Lambert): .843
Specularity (Blinn): .5
Hardness(Blinn): 16
Refr (I think this value is "refraction") (Blinn): 5.575
Translucency: .26
Ambience: .183
Emit .072

"Mirror Transp"' Options:
Raymir: enabled, .07

"Map To" tab
Nor: enabled, .50

"Texture" Window
Texture Type: Clouds

"Color" tab
Right Side Color: R .915, G .876, B .394
Left Side Color: Black
Left Side Alpha: 0

By left/rightside I mean the colors and alpha located on these two parts of the nodes window. Image shown here:

Gold 5

Based on material "Gold 3" with some tweaks to be done to make this material look more goldish. Base setup is taken from the release Notes ().

Gold

You should to take this material as a base and study thoroughly how textures are set up, because without them it loses 50 percent of its convincing look.

Material
Col: R=0.912 G=0.782 B=0.082
Spe: R=1.00 G=0.913 B=0.8
Mir: R=0.857 G=0.90 B=0.70

A: 1.0

Mirror Transp
Ray Mirror: On
RayMir: 0.40

Blender 3D rendering of gold ingots using the Gold 5 method.

Shaders
Diffuse Shader:
[Oren Nayar] Ref: 0.8
Rough: 0.9
Specular Shader:
[Phong] Spec: 1.4
Hard: 20

From those structure textures (voronoi) I suggest to suppress normal-mapped to the range 0.1-0.3.

Gold 6
This is a nice gold material I found online.

Material
Diffuse Color: Red=.286; Green=.263; Blue=.136
Specular Color: Red=1; Green=.96; Blue=.656
Mirror Color: Red=.751; Green=.664; Blue=.289
Alpha: 1

Mirror/Transparency
Ray Mirror is on and is set to 1.00.

Golden orb using the Gold 6 method

Shaders
Diffuse (Lambert): .54
Specular (CookTorr): 1.86
Specular Hardness is 356.

Gold 7

Using Blender 2.62 and the Cycles Render, I built this image showing the different settings

Fixed gold color: E5BF65
Material Surface: Glossy, Transparent Glossy, Translucent Glossy, Velvet Glossy, Diffuse Glossy, Diffuse

Gold 7 - using Blender 2.62 and the Cycles Render