When something is valuable people will go to great lengths to recycle it: and gold and the precious metals are valuable so people do go to great lengths to recycle them.
When you picked one up didn't matter whether it was a prosaic pigeon feather or a small, sharp, handsome Blue Jay feather no one needed to tell you that you beheld something precious in your hand, something whose impossible lightness and delicacy held valuable lessons, even if you didn't quite know what they were.