Speaking as one not invested in gold, and not following the price trends all that closely:
What makes you think $1700 is coming back?
Based on historical trends, the price since '06 is a historical anomaly. Perhaps a repeat of the 1980 peak & fall on a larger scale.
http://www.nma.org/pdf/gold/his_gold_prices.pdf
Imho, a lot of the price rise may have been driven to a large extent by all of the "goldbug" advertising & hype, and being of a suspicious nature, I strongly suspect the advertising was sponsored by those who were about to sell, and are now laughing at the suckers who fell for their "pump & dump" scam.
Having said that, if demand stays high, it may be worth holding onto for awhile (gold has been moving on a roughly 8-10 year cycle since '80 or so), but if you've made some money on your purchase - sell!!
The worst thing to do is hold on based on optimism (e.g. my Lucent stock ;-) ) . Sure, you may give up some potential short-term gain, but avoiding an outright loss is more important. Unless you really want/need the capital loss for your taxes.