In this article the WSJ highlights the rising price of gold and then goes on to describe a pawnbroker that has been doing a bang-up business since the economy tanked. It provides an explanation of how people are pawning gold jewelry to pay bills and hints at the reserve of wealth that gold represents. To me they are suggesting that these folks are cashing in carefully purchased reserve holdings to tide themselves over during hard times (which would be a good use of PMs as they are the only effective store of wealth open to most people).
For most (if not all) people going through the door of a "We Buy Gold" joint they are dumping gold purchased at a very high premium (jewelry often runs many times higher than the bullion price) at less than half of the spot price. These people would have been far better served to have purchased the gold (or silver) when time were good, and prices low, as bullion rather than jewelry. Shedding jewelry at a fraction of it's bullion value is a sign of very hard times and extraordinarily poor decision-making, not a "boom" or "bright spot".
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