I was in Holland, Michigan over the weekend and went to the one shopping mall in town, Westshore Mall. If you know Holland, you know it. It has the JCPenney.

Otherwise, the interior stores were rather sparse. (But the mall was recently bought and an extensive rehab is planned which could explain the scarcity of stores.)

But one booth in an empty store caught my eye.

Two men were sitting at folding tables and buying gold.

And two women were selling.

They had scales and were giving out cash for necklaces, rings, earrings etc. Anything with gold in it.

I didn’t ask how much they were paying (I wish I had.) Gold is currently selling at $931 an ounce, but, of course, these dealers would have been buying for much, much less.

But still. If you can get a couple of hundred dollars for selling some gold necklaces you hardly wear, why not?

That’s the difference between gold and the dollar. Gold actually has real value and people are willing to pay for it. If you have gold, as has been true throughout all of history, you can barter it, sell it, or use it as leverage. There’s a reason the explorers came to the New World looking for the much rumored “city of gold.”

Is this a bullish sign for gold?

I don’t remember the last time gold dealers were buying gold in a shopping mall. But clearly, the high gas and food prices are taking a toll.

More on Southwest Michigan and its economy tomorrow.

Gold is at a new all-time high (but adjusted for inflation is far from that.) But the media only cares about “records” and nice round numbers. Once it hit $900, analysts popped up on tv and in the newspapers to discuss how high gold was and where it was going to go from here.

Why is it that if a stock doubles in a year, no one goes on tv to say it’s a “mania”? Yet MasterCard, Apple and others did just that last year.

But if gold is up 30% for the year- then it’s a “mania.”

I’ve seen the “mania” quote several times in recent days and was surprised, after I did a Google search on the subject, to see that the quote was from the same analyst every time.

Here is one from US News & World Report:

Jon Nadler, a Kitco analyst, meanwhile, expects gold prices to remain high for the first part of the year but predicts a pullback in the second half. “The nearly vertical ascent [of gold prices] is starting to look like a mania phase,” he says.

Nadler said “mania” again in an interview with the AP:

“The funds are really heavily at play … The momentum with gold is almost like mania. We keep wondering how high it will go,” said Jon Nadler, an analyst with Kitco Bullion Dealers in Montreal.

Investors looking to get in on the gold rush can expect continued volatility for the rest of the year, said Nadler, whose firm forecasts a trading range of $750 to $950 an ounce.

If you look up the word “mania” in dictionary.com, it comes up with the following definitions:

1. Excessive excitement or enthusiasm; craze

2. Violent abnormal behavior

3. An irrational but irresistible motive for a belief or action

Is this gold right now?

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see it. More people are robbing graves for their copper and cars for their platinum. No one is talking about gold at cocktail parties. Old Uncle Joe wasn’t crowing about his gold holdings at the family holiday dinner.

At some point, gold will be in a mania.

But, for now, any call of a mania is, in my opinion, premature.

Gold closed at a new record, but didn’t hit a new record. The actual “record” is $850 set in January 1980. But the highest close was $825, set on that same day as the all-time record. Gold closed $8 over the old record today.

Inflation adjusted, we’d have to be at around $2000 an ounce to actually be breaking a “new” record (the same way crude has to be at $101 a barrel to actually hit a new record.)

What does this mean for gold? Not much. Suddenly some people are starting to notice it. I heard it mentioned on the radio this morning before the markets opened. That’s a first. But it’s not like it’s on everyone’s breath- not yet anyway.

For gold investors, that’s a good thing. It’s still a contrarian play (despite its big run-up.) The mainstream investing public has no clue that gold has been on a tear. They’re starting to hear more about it- but they’re still not investing in it. Not yet.

But eventually- they will.

Gold is moving higher as the dollar gets crushed. This is not a surprise. Gold is also an inflation sniffer. When it sniffs it, it goes higher. The smell must be pretty darn strong right about now.

I suspect we’ll see quite a few more “record highs” before this commodities bull is done running.

Hang on for the ride!

I bet you know what Google is trading at these days. Or how about oil? If you watch CNBC, you can see it highlighted in yellow on the upper ticker - as it flashes its new record highs seemingly every day.

What about the price of gold. Do you know what that is?

Ever so quietly, gold has been moving towards its all-time high, around $850 an ounce set the last time crude was at records in the early 1980s.

Coincidence? I think not.

Gold moved as high as $798.30 on Monday- just shy of the important psychological $800 an ounce barrier. It might take several sessions to actually close over that number. But it will eventually take that level and then move even higher.

But if you looked at most of the investing websites such as CBS Marketwatch, CNNMoney or Yahoo Finance, you wouldn’t have known that gold was at another new 28 year high. Nope. You would have had to go to other pages on those sites to seek out the information (for instance- by clicking on the “markets” page on CBSMarketwatch and going to the articles on metals.)

It is a strong bullish indicator that no one cares what gold is doing. When no one cares- sit up and take notice.

Gold is up 20% over the last two months. The gold stocks haven’t been doing quite as well. They are trailing the returns of the actual metal so far this year but they won’t trail it for forever.

Do you know anyone buying gold right now? I don’t. I don’t know anyone even buying the gold stocks. They’re all obsessed with Google, Apple, RIMM and their ilk. Make no mistake, those are all fine companies and have been excellent investments. But an obsession with one sector means that there will be opportunity in another.

When will the markets notice gold? Probably not until it’s over $800 - and then some analysts will be on tv saying it’s a “bubble” or some such hogwash like that (as gold isn’t even close to its inflation adjusted high of the early 1980s- which would be something like $2,000 an ounce.) And then once it’s over $800- everyone will ignore it again.

Because you can’t make any money off of gold, right? It’s been a “dead” investment for 28 years. Or so the “experts” say.

Gold price in 2001= $255 an ounce
Current gold price= $792.60 an ounce

Yep. No one is making any money off of that investment.

Watch gold.

You can buy gold through various ETFs, including tracking the actual metal (ticker GLD) and through the gold miners ETF (GDX)- which also owns a few silver companies for good measure.