But you can actually make gold out of lead these days. Well, yes, technically transmutation is possible. It's just not very practical. Book of incantations. In the periodic table.
Quintessence is no longer part of the scientific discourse, then.
Actually, they're starting to talk about quintessence again in cosmology, I think. I'm not a cosmologist, so I can't really say. Let's get back to the heist for a second. No, that's not right really. Mostly we buy scientific instruments with gold in them.