The elements gold and mercury show little resemblance to any
non-transition metals, but their 'transition-like' properties are not
much like those of other transition metals either. In the older
Mendeleef form of the periodic table, the elements copper, silver and
gold—often called the 'coinage' metals—occupied Group IB, and
zinc, cadmium and mercury Group IIB, these being subdivisions of
Groups I and II respectively. However, there are no really very good
grounds for treating these two trios as groups; copper, silver and
gold have few resemblances, and Group IB does not resemble Group
IA—the alkali metals. These six elements obviously present a problem
; usually they are treated as transition metals or separately as 'the
B metals1.