Buying and selling gold has recently become a very widespread business: the number of shops buying and selling second hand gold is increasing all over Europe.

The number of people that decide to sell their gold jewels and objects in general to specialized shops is increasing in many different countries, from Germany to Italy, and you only need to take a walk down the streets of any city to realize that more and more shops specialized in buying and selling gold are opening.

This phenomenon is due to different reasons and can be easily explained taking the world situation we live in into consideration. First of all, the world crisis that all countries, more or less, have been going through for over two years now, is not over yet, and many people are still facing many economic problems. Newly unemployed, young people that cannot find a job, old people that do not have enough money to buy themselves what they need…the list of the categories of people that have to face big or small problems in this period might be very long. And in times of crisis, everyone tries to find a solution using what they have. Gold, in this sense, has turned out to be a possible solution for many people. We all have some gold objects that we have received as a gift, or that have come to us as a heritage from our family. In many cases these jewels and objects in general are something that remind us of a person, or of an important event in our lifetime…for this reason it might be difficult for us to sell them, but in many other cases these are objects that we keep in a drawer and never use, because they have an old-style design, or because we are afraid of losing them or of being robbed. In these cases selling them might be a good solution, because you might turn a useless object for you into a very useful amount of money. And these days there are certainly many people that need to gain money in some way and would be happy to exchange an old gold watch with some money. Gold, moreover, is considered as a secure investment, above all in times when financial markets are in trouble.

The second reason why the number of shops selling and buying gold is increasing is that the price of gold is higher than ever in this period. In 2010 the price of gold is increased by 20%, the best result since 2007, and this is also a consequence of the crisis of the stock market: the price of gold, indeed, is intrinsically linked to the stock market performances, and it usually gets higher when stock markets undergoes some problems. And the gold market is expected to be positive also in 2011.

However, although selling our own gold objects might be useful for many people in this period, the first rule to take into consideration is to pay a lot of attention: there are many shops that can buy your gold, and each one might offer you a different price. Some shopkeepers might be more honest and expert than others, so it would be good for you to sell your gold object to a person you are sure you can trust, but if you cannot be certain of that, you’d better go to as many shops as possible and see what they can offer you. One last tip: check the performance of the price of gold before you sell your jewels, this might be very useful to understand if the shopkeeper is a honest one.