- May 12, 2024
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The International Gold, Silver and Diamond Buyers aim to spend $200,000 through Dec. 10, in Palm Coast.
In the summer of 2008, when Edith and Dan Ferrena opened Palm Coast Gold Buyers in the European Village, gold was priced at about $700 per ounce. Today, it’s up to $1,700, close to the highest value ever recorded.
The spike has been good for the couple, who have built a livelihood around buying and selling gold, silver and coins, while also serving as jewelers. They say their business revenue has more than doubled since opening.
The metals trade has also been strong enough to sustain a second local business, six-month-old Gold Buyers of Palm Coast LLC, owned by Rose Napolitano.
But the trend has attracted traveling buyers, as well, who frequent hotels to purchase coins and other valuables from Flagler County residents.
One such group, Illinois-based International Gold, Silver and Diamond Buyers, visited Palm Coast for the fifth time in three years Dec. 5, with an aim to spend at least $200,000 on gold, silver, and other valuables from Flagler residents.
Its show will run through Dec. 10, at the Holiday Inn Express, at 200 Flagler Plaza Drive.
Certain local dealers and hobbyists, though, worry that traveling buyers don’t offer the true cost of valuables to their customers.
That’s Dave Rosenthal’s take, who is the president of the nonprofit Flagler County Stamp and Coin Club. He calls moving expos “a great problem for the hobby and the general area.”
The group’s senior coin appraiser, Dean Robinson, agrees. Having visited several coin shows undercover, playing the role of a layman, he claims that, at best, “hotel buyers” will offer 25% of what most valuables could be sold for at local brick-and-mortar establishments.
“Many times,” he said, “(travelers) pay 10 cents on the dollar of what things are actually worth.”
Conversely, traditional storefront dealers usually offer closer to 90% of cost, he added, citing a man who was offered $5,000 at a hotel for his parents’ coin collection, only to later find that the loot was worth closer to 20 times that amount.
International Gold, Silver and Diamond Buyers Vice President of Media Matthew Enright, however, believes in his company. He cites a woman who once broke down in tears after selling metals at an expo, explaining that she would now be able to keep her house from foreclosing.
Last year, Enright’s company spent a total of $43,000 during its Palm Coast expo, including hotel and advertising expenses.
“We do have a lot of funds that we can pour into the economy, but that all depends on marketing and how many we can get to come out,” he said.
Recently, he added, a Tampa coin collection was purchased by his dealers for $101,000.
On average, the company spends about $80,000 in each city it holds an expo, buying on behalf of collectors, dealers and refineries. The 15-year-old firm hit 2,000 locations in 2010 in the United States and Canada, and hopes to increase that number to 3,000 in the current tour.
Robinson, whose group offers free appraisals, says he’s noticed an increase in the number of expos in Flagler in the past three years.
Before the rush, he said, about six shows per year would run, usually in Daytona or elsewhere. But now, that number has more than doubled, and dealers have crossed into Flagler County.
The number of personal appraisals he has conducted at the start of the boom went up, as well, to about two per week. But now, he averages about one per month, a trend he attributes to one of two things.
One, most residents have already sold what they wanted to sell. Or two, people are holding out, waiting for the price of gold to rise even higher than it currently is — a possibility both he and Napolitano see as exceedingly likely.
Contact Mike Cavaliere at [email protected].
How to get a free appraisal
Think you might own something valuable? The Flagler County Stamp and Coin Club will come to your home and appraise your inventory free of charge, then help you find a local dealer to which to sell.
Email [email protected] to request an appraisal.
