Near record high gold and silver prices make coin and jewelry exchange shops busy
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In the six years Mike Korstad has worked buying and selling precious metals at Minnesota Gold and Silver exchange in St. Louis Park, he says it’s never been this busy.
Some days, there are long lines of people outside the shop’s door, waiting for him to open up.
“You can see them about 9:45, they roll up into the parking lot, and they'll sit in their cars waiting, and then boom, right at 10, it's one after the other and some days it's been pretty non-stop," Korstad said.
He says that while gold dominates the news, silver is actually outperforming its precious metal counterpart, so many people are trying to cash in by selling whatever silver items they have.
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In addition to silver coins and bars, they bring in old relics they’ve inherited but have no use for.
“Full sets of sterling silver, bring in the candle holders, silver plates.” Korstad said. “They’ll bring in everything.”
Silver was worth about $32 an ounce a year ago at this time. But on January 29, it peaked at a record price of $121.60 an ounce, nearly quadrupling in value.
Gold has soared about 70 percent from this time last winter, peaking at an all-time high of nearly $5,600 an ounce on Jan. 28.
Prices of both precious metals have fallen a bit since, but Korstad says many people are still looking to take advantage of these high prices and sell off their silver and gold, and he’s also seeing an increase in people wanting to buy them as an investment, figuring prices will continue to rise.
“I think what's driving this is a lot of economic uncertainty across the board,” said Korstad.
Jennifer Lee is a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets. She agrees, saying that the sudden interest in precious metals is a response to global uncertainty surrounding President Donald Trump's unique brand of foreign policy.
“The world’s not really sure what is going to come next in terms of policy changes, if there are going to be any, and certainly in terms of changes to trade agreements as well.” said Lee.
Lee notes that over the past year, Trump raised taxes on imports from more than 90 countries, although his administration has been making deals with some countries to lower certain tariffs. This makes it tricky for businesses to plan for the future.
“Businesses find it very difficult when we don't know whether or not a certain trade deal will hold up,” Lee said. “You don't know how much your products or inputs are going to cost, how much you can get and whether or not you can still get them.”
Analysts say investors often look to diversify their assets when things are uncertain and precious metals are usually considered a safe haven even if the economy is doing poorly.
In fact, when the U.S. dollar weakens, gold becomes more valuable.
For example, in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis, the value of the dollar fell, while the price of gold surged.
Since then, central banks around the world have also started to drive up the cost of gold by stockpiling the precious metal.
According to the World Gold Council, from 2022 to 2024, central banks bought a combined average of more than 1,000 tons of gold every year.
Even as the precious metal prices rose sharply in the last year, the amount central banks were buying dipped only slightly, suggesting that they believe it to be a sound investment regardless of price.
The United States has the world’s biggest stockpile of gold, sitting at more than 8,000 tons.
Why are central banks stockpiling all of this Gold?
Trevor Yates, a senior investment analyst with the investment company Global X, said it’s too diversify their assets.
“They manage their reserve portfolio, like investors manage their retirement accounts,” Yates said. “They like to diversify.”
Yates says that global central banks are moving away from investing in things like bonds and are instead, stocking up on gold.
“It has a pretty long track record, and it's really held up and really maintained its purchasing power over thousands of years,” said Yates.
Mike Korstad says his customers at the Minnesota Gold and Silver exchange are essentially doing the same thing, putting their trust in an asset they can actually hold in their hands that will likely continue to grow in value over the long term.
Korstad says that he thinks that a lot of the people that come into his shop aren’t comfortable with the current state of the economy and are searching to remedy their worries.
“That differs from the people that were coming in from years prior. It's just their... It's uncertainty,” said Korstad.
It’s hard to say how prices of precious metals will fare in the future, but as central banks continue to buy them up, economists and investment analysts don’t expect the price of gold and silver to drop significantly anytime soon. In fact,they believe it will continue to rise over the long term.
