Are you considering a career change, perhaps? There are a lot of industries that have prospered during the last few years of the recession, and probably none more so than the gold merchant industry. There are a lot of gold dealers out there, certainly far more than has historically been the case, and this is probably because of the opportunities for profitability that the field has offered through the recession, which hit a lot of other people very hard. It makes sense, then, that many folks are considering switching their line of work into the gold dealing industry.
The bulk of the merchants that operate in this industry tend to specialize in gold and silver. There are a lot of good reasons for this choice in specialization, but the best reason probably has to do with the fact that gold and silver have both been hitting record highs consistently over the last few months. Gold in particular has been faring very well during the recession, primarily because of its reputation as a good store of value, and a hedge against the dollar, which has attracted a lot of criticism lately. It makes sense, then, that the amount of money invested in gold increased, and that the price went up along with it.
Similarly, the price of silver also began to go up. Silver does not really have the same “store of value” quality as gold does, but the price of silver is usually somewhat correlated with the price of gold, as silver is something of a substitute for gold (at least, as close to a substitute as gold has). As a result, if gold goes up in price, manufacturers switch to using silver, and the price of silver eventually increases as well. These two metals account for a large volume of the total inventory dealt with by precious metal dealers. By buying unprocessed articles of the metals, such as scrap silver and gold dust, and then processing them for resale, precious metal dealers earn quite a good living.
Sat, Aug 7, 2010
Business