Is a gold nib worth the extra money?

Specialist-community consensus is that a well-tuned steel nib (Lamy, Pilot, Hongdian) writes better than a poorly-tuned gold-plated nib on a luxury-styled rebrand. True gold nibs offer a softer feel but don't appear on any of the under-$50 pens in this roundup — the '24K' and 'gold-finish' language on several candidates here refers to plating, not nib material.