w3m3

The number of people that are offering to buy and sell gold these days is absolutely staggering. Just a couple of decades ago, the gold buying and reselling industry was limited to just a few people – namely, pawn shop owners and professional jewelers (and even professional jewelers would not touch a lot of used gold jewelry). These days, however, it seems like everyone and their mother has moved into the industry because of the profit that is available there.

Look at the newspapers, for example. It is pretty much impossible to pick up a newspaper without seeing pages covered in ads by gold dealers who are offering to purchase your old gold jewelry at market prices. Where are all these gold dealers coming from? Why is buying and selling gold jewelry – particularly old gold jewelry – suddenly so popular?

Well, according to the cash for gold insider,  one reason has to do with the prices of gold, which have risen quite a lot lately. In fact, the price of gold has been hitting record highs again and again for a few months as of the time of this writing (July 2010). Naturally, a lot of people have suddenly become interested in the metal after its meteoric price rises; and similarly, a lot of consumers (that is, people like you and me) have become interested in selling their old gold jewelry, because it will now fetch more than it ever would have in the past.

This is related to the second reason why these gold merchants are suddenly doing so much business – the financial crisis. Since the recession began, people have been realizing that they will not be able to make their payments on their house mortgage loan, or on their car note, because they do not have the liquid cash lying around. In order to increase liquidity, a lot of people have been turning to unorthodox methods – particularly, they have been selling their old gold. This, more than anything else, is probably the largest reason for the sudden rise in gold dealers.