For every person buying gold there is another person selling gold - I wonder what the person selling the gold is buying with his money. If he has held the gold for any length of time his pile of money has magically grown, but was it a good store of wealth?

Most people are using gold as a compact, very dense, indestructible store of wealth, gold is not convienient any more for day to day financial transactions - they are two different uses.

If you hold gold as a store of wealth no interest is payable, so it is viable long term so long as everybody accepts gold has value - unlike our current fiat, fractional banking, system which must have growth.

All saving methods are risky, gold is no exception.

For every person buying gold there is another person selling gold - I wonder what the person selling the gold is buying with his money.

Maybe he's just meeting a margin call?

It's interesting to see what happened with gold in other societies that suffered economic collapse. The guy from Argentina recommended gold, but said to buy a bunch of cheap gold wedding rings, rather than coins or other investment pieces. He said the dealers would give you the same amount for any piece of gold, regardless of size or quality. And I suppose offering a cheap wedding ring would make you less of a target than flashing around a big coin or ingot.

The Yugoslavia guy didn't recommend gold. What use is gold, when there's no food or fuel to buy? He said other things were far more valuable: soap, cosmetics, toilet paper, cast iron cookware. People would trade food for those items.