Back in 1980, just as the gold price blasted upwards past $800/oz, buyers reportedly lined up in droves at various bullion dealers to participate in the rally. Investment analyst Jay Taylor writes, “I remember 1980… there was panic buying of gold by people in the streets of New York City. They were lined up around the block to buy gold and Krugerrands at that time.” That flurry of buying ended up representing a classic top. As gold failed to move higher, the speculative frenzy soon reversed into a despondency that dragged gold into a twenty year bear cycle. For those investors who bought at the top, it was a hard lesson learned.

Fast forward to today, and in the days that have followed this past Friday’s (and Monday’s) incredible gold price smash, the strangest thing has happened: physical buyers have come out in droves, but this time they’re buying immediately following an unprecedented $200 price decline.

Consider the following:

The US Mint reported selling 63,500 ounces (2 tonnes) of gold on April 17th alone, which brought total April month-to-date sales up to 147,000 ounces – more than the previous two months of gold sales combined.1 The US Mint’s year-to-date sales are now up 79% from the same period in 2012.

Coin dealers in Tokyo and Dubai reported an immediate spike in sales following the gold smash this past Friday. Reuters writes, “A week ago, as the yen-denominated price neared a new peak, jewelry stores and gold merchants across Japan saw long lines of mostly older Japanese looking to cash in on unwanted jewelry and other items that they had held for years… But on Tuesday, buyers outnumbered sellers by a wide margin. At Ginza Tanaka, the headquarters shop of Tanaka Holdings, gold buyers waited for as long as three hours for a chance to complete a transaction.”

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Zero Hedge

Whether by intent or good fortune, gold's plunge in the last few days has reduced its appeal as a store of wealth and spurred the more central-planner-biased view that the US Dollar is the 'safest' place to deposit your hard-earned after-tax wealth. However, as Cypriots learned the hard way, trust in the entire system depends on the counterparty (in the case of bank deposits, you are implicitly lending your money for no return to a highly-leveraged entity) covered by an FIDC guarantee. As the following infographic makes very clear, that level of trust is remarkable when the reality is that gold is an asset without any counterparty risk and without any implied risk.