Selling Gold - the New National Pastime

What kinds of treasures lie in your attic? To families across the country, digging out poorly-used and very old silver items from storage and bits of broken gold jewelry from deep in some drawer are becoming quite a profitable pastime. The price of gold and silver have been soaring on the backs of vigorous investing activity for quite a while now; and people are beginning to realize that this could be a great time to bring long forgotten pieces of precious metal out in the open. As people begin to hear the news of how they are in the middle of a rare opportunity to turn forgotten scraps of precious metal into cash, with gold and silver prices at record highs, they have taken to everything short of digging out their fillings to cash in. Selling gold has become the new national pastime.

The price of gold jumped up 50% in the first quarter of this year alone. It's the highest it's been since the 80s. And jewelers of every description have begun to change the recipes they use for their designs. Gold, long the mainstay of the wedding ring, is beginning to give way to silver. In some cases, jewelers are trying to construct rings almost entirely without metal - mostly with precious stones like emeralds. As the marriage season picks up steam, even Indian weddings, long dependent on the luster of gold to make things look classy enough, are changing their ways.

With everyone getting in on the act, selling gold and silver, one of the first kinds of business to benefit has been the pawn shop. Corporate-owned businesses like First Cash Financial and EZCorp have been doing spectacularly well. They've seen growth that's about 50% higher than even a couple of months ago, with customers and bringing in every scrap of gold and silver they can lay their hands on.

Investors who wish to get in on the precious metals are in many cases worried about how they've missed the boat with gold. At $1600 a troy ounce, this isn't any market for investors to be getting into for the first time. It's for investors who have already bought in and who wish to be selling gold to cash out. Silver, at about $50 a troy ounce is priced exactly right for those who may wish to make a killing. Silver has never been really considered a precious metal; it is not a base metal, of course; but it hasn't quite been in the same leagues as gold or platinum.

Basically, jewelry makers who design stuff for the affordable end of the market are trying to switch to base metals. Even silver is too expensive these days. Go to stores like Nordstrom or Saks, and the jewelry you see there that sells for $300 or so is usually gold-plated brass these days.