Gold and silver surge benefitting shops that sell and buy precious metals

The price of gold is going up and CTV’s Spencer Turcotte finds out how people in Waterloo Region are taking advantage.

Even with the occasional dip, gold and silver prices have soared lately.

It’s prompted people to flock to shops around Waterloo Region that buy and sell the precious metals.

Colonial Acres Coins has had a packed parking lot recently. Some days customers are lined up out the door.

“The amount of traffic we’ve had is astronomical. It’s all-hands-on-deck,” said Todd Sandham, co-owner of Colonial Acres.

So what’s behind this rush?

“We saw gold rally for days and days reaching a new historic high at over $5,500. We’ve seen silver pass $120,” said Bart Melek, global head of commodity strategy at TD Securities.

Melek said the combination of gold and silver have been the best performing assets for the last 12 months.

However, the metals’ momentum was halted late last week.

“This was on the back of President Trump’s statement that he is likely to nominate a new Fed Chair who happens to be a hawk on the inflation front,” said Melek.

Influence from geopolitical tensions is a factor too.

Yet, we’ve seen quite the recovery in the last several days with gold scoring its biggest daily gain since 2008.

For shops like Colonial Acres, they’ve struck gold.

“Whatever gold does, silver follows. Like I said, it’s his little brother so silver would go up as well,” said Sandham.

Customers have been coming in after searching through their homes to see how they can capitalize.

“If you got old sterling flatware like the nice cutlery you use when you have company over, people are coming in and selling that because it’s actually worth quite a bit of money now,” said Sandham.

On the flip side, people are looking to be buyers too, with projections that precious metals will do fairly well over the next six months.