clearly you don't buy these things just for the gold you buy them because they are cool and people will way the same premium when you go to sell them (unless they get damaged)

I think the company also accepts them and returns roughly the same amount of usd. There are also gb ATM and a whole network of other stuff, but yeah it's mostly the cool factor :D

are these things like laminated or anything?

Yes they are laminated in some short of polymere, but you don't feel much difference in thickness at least up to the "10", which is the biggest denomination I happen to own. They have a "good" feeling in the hand btw.

There's also the 25, 50 and most recently the 100 gb, I don't yet have any of those so I can't comment 😅