Why do people believe that gold and silver are good investments for economic collapse? Is this valid?

It seems to me that gold and silver are monetarily useless in an economic collapse.

My first concern is that gold and silver are only valuable because the collective views them as valuable (as with all things). In a world without a functional economy, gold and silver become useless to the average person. It seems to me that bartering for supplies would be far more useful and that investing in essentials (idk… toilet paper, clothing, non-perishable foods, etc.) would be better in a bartering economy before society could rebound.

Second, even if people did still accept gold and silver as a de facto currency in this collapse scenario, a 10oz bar is still completely useless unless you’re buying $30k of supplies at a times. Even large gold coins are impractical at the cost paid to acquire them pre-collapse. Unless you’re willing to accept insane depreciation on a single gold coin for supplies you require to survive.

Lastly, if people were to respect this “value” of gold post-apocalypse, why wouldn’t they just accept the value of the previous currency which they were accustomed to using already? It seems far more practical to have a stash of lightweight bills in various divisions than large weights of heavy metals.

I’ve just never understood this fascination with precious metals and the belief that they are inherently valuable regardless of circumstance.