 Online edition of India's National Newspaper Saturday, Dec 27, 2008 ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version |
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PEABODY: Mary Sullivan went to the North Shore Mall recently not to buy, but to sell. In her coat pocket, she carried a plastic baggie filled with gold necklaces and earrings she had emptied from her jewellery box. And there, in the cavernous mall, surrounded by dozens of struggling stores that would love her business, she cashed in her gold, pocketing $70 and change. “Times are tight,” the 61-year-old Salem resident said. “I’ve got grandchildren I want to buy for.” Because of the down economy, malls in the Northeast, those vast retail shrines to creature comforts, have welcomed a new business into the mix this holiday season: gold buyers. A Virginia-based company called Goldrush has set up kiosks in malls from Virginia to New Hampshire asking customers to sell them gold and silver — at a fraction of its value — so they can melt it down and resell it. That means customers can shed lone earrings and unwanted wedding bands or part with heirloom jewellery or family silver in mall courtyards, something routinely done in markets and banks across Europe and in many developing countries. And while the kiosks are a new addition to mall life in America, they are also reminiscent of another era. “It’s certainly something that was done in the days of the Depression,” said Brad Ziglar, managing editor of Hard Assets Investor, a website about commodities investing. “We’re nowhere near the state we were in the 1930s with our economy, but times are tough enough that some people are looking at the goods that they have and wondering if liquidating them makes any sense.” The mall kiosks are more of a fire sale. Goldrush’s rates for gold change daily, loosely based on fluctuating market prices, but customers usually only get a small percentage of the value. The price of 14 karat gold has generally hovered between $700 and $800 an ounce on the open market. On a recent weekday, the North Shore Mall’s Goldrush kiosk offered $10.88 a gram for 14 karat gold, or about $308 an ounce. Wayland rare coin dealer Brett Leifer scoffed at the prices offered by the kiosks, because “it’s not a very efficient way for people to sell their gold.” — New York Times News Service
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