Certainly there is more awareness of gold in the USA than there was in the 1990s. On political radio- conservative or liberal- you hear "buy gold!" advertising. I've been hearing those ads going back, at least, to 2005! They were there in between the mortgage refinance ads back in the day. On TV you see people pitching "investment grade" and "rare" gold coins. They think numismatics are the way to go, and they are charging too much money. I've seen that since the 1990s. I bet the amounts of both of these kinds of marketing of gold is up significantly in the last 10 years.

All around Europe, eastern and western europe, I've seen lots of signs at money changers and some banks who are happy to sell you gold. These signs are generally posters in the windows, not metal signs or painted, so this gives me the impression this is a new phenomena. I was very happy to see these signs, given my experience in the USA.

In the USA, if you want to buy gold, you can spend way too much to buy it on the TV. Or you can go to one of the few local retailers who sell bullion - but generally their primary business is either selling collectable coins or selling jewelry. The bullion is a side business. Unless things have changed in the last year, it is a pain in the ass to buy gold in the USA. There may be one or two of these bullion dealers in a larger sized town. You can't just go to the money changer or the bank.

I gave you several reasons for my perspective. Consider them critically. But if you're looking for someone to agree with you, and tell you I'm a dirty rotten capitalist who is full of it, you'll have no trouble finding that.

I would strongly recommend that you not rely on my opinion, or that of the "hive mind" or anyone else to make any sort of financial decisions. You have to use your own judgement and you have to learn what you can about the subject. This is why I said, "If I'm wrong, I'll be punished"-- the market will take one action or the other, long after this conversation is finished.

I would suggest reading economics books such as "Economics in one lesson" by Henry Hazlitt Free here: http://www.hacer.org/pdf/Hazlitt00.pdf

By all means, keep a critical eye on anything anyone says in favor -- or opposed-- to gold. That is why I read what you said and considered it seriously. I'm keenly looking for evidence of a bubble, and you referenced a metric I use.

I'd also recommend looking a bit into the history of gold, preferably by reading articles here: http://mises.org

Here's the short summary, see if this fits with what you know of the world:
Gold is historically been the best form of money because it was difficult to counterfeit, had reasonable value per given weight, was malleable, didn't degrade, etc. But governments want to spend more than they have, so they choose paper currencies over gold. The nice thing about paper is that they can make it "money" by passing a law, forcing people to use it... and they can print as much as they want. The downside is, they get addicted to this spending, and in doing so, they always need to spend more and more. The more paper there is in circulation the more pieces of paper it takes to buy anything tangible, and prices rise, which means costs rise for the governments and they need to print paper at an even faster rate.

These effects take a very long time to play out. They ultimately result in a currency crisis, however. Gold is merely something that is difficult to counterfeit, and it is difficult to bring new mines into production. So it serves as a hedge against currencies.

I don't think there's ever been a gold bubble. When gold has gone up in response to a currency, really it is the value of the currency declining with respect to gold. The amount of gold in the world doesn't change very fast- it can't- at least in terms of currencies, and thus really the "gold price" is the "price of the currency in units of gold." $1,580 is not a gold price, it is a measure of the value of the dollar.