Germany has devised the ultimate in credit crunch vending machines: Gold to Go.

After inserting your euros in the slot there is a familiar whirring noise as if the machine is readying itself to spit out a can of lemonade or a bar of chocolate. Instead there is a satisfying clunk as a prettily wrapped bar of the world's favourite precious metal thuds into the dispenser.

"It's better value than the bank," Romy Erhardt of TG-Gold-Super-Markt told The Times, "And it's very convenient — no waiting time — you just put in your cash and a minute later you are an investor in gold."

The prototype gold-dispenser has been installed in Frankfurt airport and today there was a queue of passengers mulling over whether to buy one gramme, 5 grammes or ten grammes of gold.

The one-gramme bar was available for €30 (£25). Other options — rather like a high-end coffee machine it has five selections — included a Maple Leaf Five Canadian dollar coin and a Kangaroo Fifteen Australian dollar coin. Both represent about one tenth of an ounce of gold and the price on today was hovering around €80.

"The price is updated every 15 minutes," Ms Erhardt explained. "The vending machine is linked to the computer which we use for our online gold outlet."

The margins are lower than those offered by banks but fluctuate at about 20 per cent higher than market prices. That is the price of being able to pick up your gold before boarding an aircraft and having it packaged in a metal case labelled "My Golden Treasure".

A less sophisticated version of this Gold to Go machine was installed in Frankfurt's main railway station last month and has been doing well. The company hopes to put 500 of the machines throughout Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

They are riding on the crest of a wave of investor interest in gold as the market price edges up towards $1,000 for a troy ounce.

Online gold dealers — who offer a discreet armoured-car delivery for large purchases — are reporting boom times. The World Gold Council said that individual purchases started to rise dramatically in the last quarter of 2008 and have broken all records in the first quarter of this year.

Above all, small individual investors — nervous about the future of the dollar and other currencies — are buying and selling the metal. In the US, the gold equivalent of Tupperware parties have caught on and the idea has spread to Britain.

The Michigan based company My Gold Party — a housewife acts as a company agent and invites her friends to her home to have their gold rings and bracelets professionally valued — has been taken up by 28 US states.

The online company Cash4gold.com meanwhile is reporting 25,000 transactions a month. And Exboyfriendjewelry.com — whose testimonials are full of stories about the cathartic effect of selling jewelery given by former husbands and lovers — is thriving.

The Germans are particularly interested, partly because of the collective memory of the currency collapse after two world wars.

Some high street jewellers even buy dental gold to be melted down. "German investors have always preferred to hold a lot of personal wealth in gold, for historical reasons," said Thomas Geissler, head of the Stuttgart-based TG-Gold-Super-Markt.

There is a German fascination with gold that goes even deeper than anxiety about failing currencies. One of Germany's best loved fairy tales, a classic bedtime story, features a donkey that excretes gold coins every time that one shouts the magic word "Bricklebrit!"

To make sure that no one tries a similar trick with the Frankfurt gold vending machine, the company has positioned it near high-resolution closed circuit television cameras and given it an armour-plated casing.

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