It's interesting to see that, while other commodities have trended down, gold has maintained it's value. Anyone have any thoughts on the reason for this??

Here is an interesting source of information
http://www.invest.gold.org/sites/en/why_gold/

Here is another great article... it is a little bit of an older article but the information still is great.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/whygold.html

The last sentence of the article...

"What keeps the gold standard from becoming a reality again is the love of big government and war. If we ever fall in love with freedom again, the gold standard will once more become a hot issue in public debate. "

Ya, dear friends precious metal Gold Value Maintained when other commodities Fluctuate.