To be sure, gold buyers have always been motivated by fear. What has changed is that some of the most respected investors on Wall Street are now among the fearful.

“In recent years, we have gone from one bubble and bailout to the next,” David Einhorn, a New York money manager who was among the first to foretell the failure of Lehman Brothers, said in a speech last month. “Our gold position reflects our concern that our fiscal and monetary policies are not sufficiently geared toward heading off a possible crisis.”

Since ancient times, gold has been deemed intrinsically valuable, holding its worth even as governments fell and currencies collapsed, while seemingly casting a spell on its owners.

Still, gold can go down  sometimes sharply. After peaking in 1980 at more than $800 an ounce, gold sank over the next two decades, bottoming out at just over $250 an ounce in 1999. But unlike paper assets that can become worthless, gold always retains at least some value.

These days, gold is also something of a political Rorschach test. On conservative talk radio, opposition to the Obama administration’s economic policies and warnings that huge budget deficits will set off runaway inflation have made gold a hot topic of on-air discussion  and lured gold companies as advertisers.

Tongue only half in cheek, Glenn Beck advised his audience to consider “Gold, God and Guns,” while laying out three possible scenarios for the economy: recession, depression or collapse.

One major advertiser on Mr. Beck’s show is Goldline, a huge California marketer of gold coins and bars that is also a sponsor of programs hosted by other prominent conservative commentators like Laura Ingraham and Mike Huckabee. Mr. Beck has said he “was a client of Goldline long before they were a client of mine,” adding: “I personally don’t buy gold as an investment. I buy it for protection.”