It's not that the price is different, per se.  When gold crashed
on Monday, dragging market prices down to a low of $1321.50 an
ounce from levels around $1560 only days before, holders of
physical gold saw the value of their holdings decline as well.
However, we've seen a lot of claims that somehow there's a
difference between the market for physical gold (people buying
gold bars or gold coins) and that for "paper" gold (which refers
to gold futures traded on the COMEX or shares of GLD, the gold
ETF).  Jim Rickards, a prominent gold bull and author of the
book Currency Wars, told Business Insider that the disconnect
between the two markets evidenced by the crash on Monday is not
one of price, but "in terms of behavior, in terms of people's
responses to market developments."  So, what does that mean
exactly?  Rickards uses a classic "weak hands, strong hands"
analogy to compare physical gold buyers and paper gold buyers.
According to Rickards, the "weak hands" in the gold market were
the over-leveraged buyer