Gold stays the same. It does shift based on supply and demad for money changes, but in terms of purchasing power gold has always been able to buy the same ammount of goods, adjusted for productivity increaces. It's in the data, you can google it.
I voted for $3000-over, but the real question IMO is how high can silver go? There is more gold out there compared to silver then people think. I saw an article that I think was correct that said if you ask everyone in the world which is rarer, gold or silver, 99.99% will say Gold and say it with 100% conviction. However, those same people cannot even give you ball park figures on how much Gold and Silver there is! People are born "knowing" gold is rarer because of history and pricing and it is seen more often. Of course, this can change. Think about this - Ft. Knox is presumed to have 140,000,000 ounces of gold and 0 silver. If the Ft. Knox gold was split evenly between 10,000 coin dealers in the U.S., each dealer would get 14,000 ounces! Gold would appear to be in a huge abundance! So yes, if you go to a pawn shop, coin dealer, and/or coin show, you will see alot of silver - much more so then gold - because Gold is often hidden in vaults, safe deposit boxes, etc, etc. And of course, there are many "mini" Ft. Knoxs in other countries, etc. I am not saying silver is rarer then gold, but with gold still bringing about 40 fold the price of silver, I think if silver catches up a bit, that is where the real % gains could come. Another quick data - even gold bulls often say "there is 8 times more silver mined each year then gold" - but again, gold is 40X the price of silver! JJacksET4
Silver is an industrial metal, and a very large fraction of it is consumed. Gold is only consumed in industrial processes to a trivial extent.
My neighbour said he heard on Russia Today that it could surpass $4,000. I think perhaps higher. Silver is the biggest increaser in recent months.
Given that the Middle East will be in heightened turmoil for a while and that neither the European or U.S. debt crises will go unsolved for years to come, I think gold will eventually hit $3k an ounce. Any higher than that is fantasy and cannot be sustained.
Conditions line up more each day for the perfect storm. A Virtually incapacitated Fed. Inflation. Commodities igniting unrest in the ME and elsewhere. Wait until your state goes broke. Potential parabolic rise in the metals.