The 1980 High was the result of
the Hunt brothers trying to corner the market using margins so its not a real market driven high, but the result of an artificially imposed scarcity - and it was done more or less in the open. And back then you saw the $5 moves, and it was a result of the Hunt Brother's manipulation.
FDRs attempt to confiscate (steal) gold was America's first monetary default... though no one calls it that. . .the gold that was collected went to pay our foreign debts (mostly in Europe) However all it really did was create a black market in gold. Gold is really, really easy to hide- and FDRs law exempted coin collections, jewelry etc.. so people were melting their coins down and having them made into jewelry ( and according to the guy in Argentina - "junk gold" jewelry brought the same price as .999 gold during their collapse... Keep that in mind..) .Silver has industrial uses and it would be subject to similar exemptions if they tried that. FDR confiscated gold because that is what our debts were denominated in at the time. Now they are denominated in dollars, and we can just print those.
In the end though, Russia and every other oppressive top-down economy had very successful black markets. If the government tried to stop trade in bullion they would fail. You can really only enforce laws if the majority of people obey them on their own. Once "everyone is doing it" you might get pinched, but you have the safety in numbers thing going on - and they will be going after the big players - not worrying about some guy buying bread.
Not sure what is going on here, and there could be all sorts of backroom deals - banks working to issue naked shorts on behalf of the fed, with the fed bailing them out when they need to buy them back? Who knows.