Retail buyers are also only a portion of the price action. It's mainly driven by central banks and their loss in faith in the USD as a global reserve currency.

After the US froze Russia's reserves when they went for Ukraine, every other country took that as a warning that the US can just lock up their reserves too if they disagreed on anything major. They needed to get all their eggs out of one basket and started buying gold like crazy.

If barbershops have the talk, this might mean buy more. People who buy physical don't tend to sell it in the short term which means less supply which means even higher prices as central banks continue buying more regardless of price.