It’s a Golden Opportunity

Diary Of A PawnbrokerFeatures

What strange times we live in. If someone had said to me in January that the whole world would go into lockdown, shops would be shut for 3 months and the Government would pay us to stay at home I would have thought they were mad!

However now we are all allowed out again, it seems that life has returned to something like normal pretty quickly and the turmoil of the last 3 months has started to become a distant memory.

My business has sides – pawnbroking loans and retail jewellery sales. The pawnbroking arm was deemed as an essential service during lockdown by the government to allow people access to money and their valuables and I found myself, as the only one not on furlough,  travelling back and forward across the country to open the shops in Liverpool and Yorkshire to serve our customers. Most were very grateful and hopefully it helped many people at the time. Strangely we were not allowed to open the retail side so it was not until 15th June that the business fully reopened.

Since then trade has steadily returned and now we find we cannot supply enough Rolex and preowned gold chain and jewellery as there is a very strong demand out there.

Gold has rocketed in price since the Covid crisis and people are now looking to invest the money they have saved from not going abroad, or going out to pubs and restaurants, on investments, that will stand the test of time.

We have not increased the price of our pre-owned gold for the last 6 years and it is now such amazing value that some items are actually lower in price than the scrap price – no wonder our customers are returning!

Rolex have had a similar story and these luxury time pieces continue to gain value year on year. Once again, they are being seen as great investment opportunities and we have never had so much interest in these high value watches than in the last 2 weeks.

I guess the biggest change to come out of the crisis is the escalation to the gold price. We are buying gold by the kilogram as customers take the opportunity to cash in their unwanted jewellery and scrap items and receive in many cases more than they actually bought it for.

Therefore while the world continues to change and adapt to its new normal of face masks, people avoidance and elbow bump greetings, some things don’t change, and the safe haven of gold and Rolex remain as solid as ever and a sensible asset to own as your money store. 

Chris Brown

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