The picture above shows a 600 year (!) view of the price of gold (It's from the Daily Telegraph via Paul Kedrosky).

Here are a couple of thoughts for you:

1) Obviously buying and holding gold in the Middle Ages through today was a bad idea

2) You're almost certainly better holding stocks over the long term.  Here's a graph of the historical price of the DJIA (from Analyze Indices):

Just eyeballing it here, but it was about 100 in 1920; it's 12,800 today.  Gold was then roughly $200; it's ~$800 today.  Unless you're really good at market timing I'd say stay away from betting on gold long term...