The popular press is directing headline attention to gold’s cultural, physical and financial qualities.

 Many media properties, after almost 30 years of indifference, are raising the possibility of a far higher gold price to their mainstream audiences.

 Media properties in London, New York, Boston, Paris and major cities outside Asia are just this week starting to report the thickening premiums that middle-sellers place on coins, bars and other deliveries of the metal. In some cases, as in a BusinessWeek article Monday extolling the benefits of gold ownership, the articles are year-end investment views.

 In first-rate fashion, National Geographic in a just-published January 2009, issue features gold in a cover piece complete with a three-century price chart and deeply telling photographs from Ghana, Peru and India. The issue and exotic cover photo of a gold-masque princess will become a collector’s item.

 National Geographic ranks sixth in circulation among North America magazines, making it a possible leading indicator of media reflex toward the precious metal commodity. The magazine’s circulation of five million plus is distributed across the planet.

 A week ago, the News Corp. owned (NYSE: NWS) Wall Street Journal published a front-section history of bullion from author James Grant. In it, the newsletter economist from New York City explained clearly a centuries-old tradition of buying gold to maintain consuming potency in times when paper instruments are deteriorating.

 Gold prices Monday, just ahead of year-end deliveries of gold on futures markets in Chicago, London and New York, were closing in on $900 an ounce for the first time since early October. The $900 mark would give the metal an even $30 per gram count, or less than a third of the $100-gram expectation explained in Ticker Trax By Thom Calandra™.

 Ticker Trax By Thom Calandra™ and its growing group of subscribers are steady in the belief that rising demand for physical gold will boost bullion prices against all currencies. Gold coins – in hand – effectively sell now for almost $1,000 per ounce-sovereign. Junk silver also sells at 15% and greater premiums to the underlying asset.

 On Monday, even the dusty old South African rand was appreciating against the dollar as gold’s price rose, giving Cape Town gold owners a Southern Hemisphere summer to remember fondly. ($100 per gram price forecast: See ThomWatch and GATA.)

 The GOFO, or one-month gold forward rate that measures counterparty risk, was dropping on Monday to 0.17143, its lowest since Dec. 16 and an indication the metal might deliver a backwards holding spin to those seeking it instantly or one month into the future.

 TV on the radio

 Television is also devoting more time to gold, led by News Corp. properties Fox Business News in North America and Sky News in Britain. In some cases, the television coverage is coupled with reports of Middle Eastern turmoil.

 Major dailies and broadcasters in India, Australia and Hong Kong, as well as several in South America and more than a few in Japan and Dubai, have been faithfully educating their audiences about the metal’s ability to outspend cash in scenarios where sellers are wary of paper currencies. South African print dailies and radio stations are gushing in daily reports of gold gains.

 Now, the press is using the term counterparty risk as a proxy for the fiscal turmoil that occurred earlier this year, when money market funds were in danger of melting below their basic unit levels. The meltdown was the result of a growing panic among consumers as banks closed their doors.

 Gold’s price this coming week, and into the first days of 2009, will approach and eventually surpass the $1,000-ounce mark the metal reached in spring 2008. A flurry of physical gold demands and stop-gap deliveries on futures exchanges could hasten the timing of gold’s price gains on Wednesday, the final calendar day of the year 2008.

 When that happens, garage-loft investors who own gold coins and bars will benefit from nearby access to the metal. Gold’s price is up about 7% in December after spending seven months declining from its March clinch of the $1,000 level.

 The Gladwell Tipping Point will occur when North America’s highest circulation publications, the top two publications from AARP, put gold “out front.” By then, 40 million retirees and those approaching retirement might wish they had bought and stored some bullion.  (See: ThomWatch for more.)

 The AARP members, almost 40 million, start at age 50. They are likely to see gold on the cover of their monthly publication from the retirement lobbying group well before the metal appears out front in Barron’s, the Dow Jones weekly magazine that in our neighborhood has been dubbed Barren.

 Reports from our Ticker Trax By Thom Calandra™ network anticipate but cannot confirm cover issue splashes on gold (and other commodities) this approaching Friday and into the first week of 2009 from The Economist magazine in London and other European publications in Paris, Frankfurt and Zurich. Half-sister publication The Financial Times in London has covered gold’s gains better than most, if not all, financial publications in the western world.

 Our bullion logic in subscribers’ Ticker Trax By Thom Calandra™ is well documented. Physical gold is almost surely on its way to an inflation-adjusted high, which is approximately $2,500 (based on a January 1980 high of $870 an ounce). National Geographic does gold investors a service with its historical, inflation-adjusted chart in the current issue.

 Platinum’s price will far outstrip the gold price at some point in the next two years. “Junk silver” will become the savior of consumers who still have small change they are willing to spend. A handful of small miners poised to produce physical gold will see their valuations soar as investors in Geneva, London and Toronto take notice of the new, cheaply produced ounces pulled from the ground.

 That is it for now. Paying subscribers of Ticker Trax™ are now in possession of our first planetary prospect and our proposed repository for cash intended to purchase gold and silver. (See: www.TickerTrax.com.) Please email me if you are interested in attending the first Ticker Trax cocktail party in Vancouver on Saturday, Jan. 24.

 On The Ticker Trax™

 Ticker Trax By Thom Calandra™ explores planet Earth for those few stakes that offer the prospect of excellent, in some cases cosmic, returns. It is for those who are entirely at ease with stratospheric levels of risk in a handful of planetary prospects. (Please see www.TickerTrax for charter sign-up.)

 Please see inaugural sample issue of Ticker Trax™. Bonus: Please take a look at the Ticker Trax™ discussion group on Stockhouse.

 HOLDINGS: Thom’s cosmos of holdings is listed for free Stockhouse members on www.Stockhouse.com under the “portfolio setting” for user TCALANDRA. He and his family also own recently minted gold coins. For more ThomWatch, please click here.

 THOM’S STORY: Thom Calandra helped his audience find value in a quagmire of investment choices. Thom co-founded CBS MarketWatch, MarketWatch.com and FT MarketWatch in Europe. As the voice of Thom Calandra's StockWatch and The Calandra Report, Thom fancied $300-ounce gold before that metal became an investment rage. Thom visited bioscience companies, metals mines and scores of thin-crust pie joints across the planet in a search for profit, fashion and pizze de trippa gorgonzola. He also settled a valid complaint with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission in 2005.Thom's novel PABLO BY NUMBERS was completed in summer 2008.