Dunedin coin dealer nearly out of gold amid record demand

DUNEDIN, Fla. — Gold prices continue to increase dramatically and hit new all-time highs. 

Since the beginning of the year, gold futures have gone up by about 50%, and it’s now valued at more than $4,000 per ounce. 

BGatorCoins has been extremely busy for the last couple weeks.

“I’ve been in the industry for 19 years, and I have never ever seen anything remotely approaching this level of demand,” said Zane Sturgeon, CEO of BGatorCoins.

Sturgeon took over the Dunedin business from his dad last year.

“It’s great, I get to interact with new people, I get to see a lot of interesting things,” he said.

Lately, Sturgeon said he has seen a lot of new people, and many of them are gold buyers. On Saturday alone, BGatorCoins sold half a million dollars worth of gold.

“Things got so busy that we did more business in a day than we did in the previous month, and that has been the case every day since two weeks ago, roughly,” Sturgeon said.

University of Tampa economics professor John Dorrell said that it’s not that gold is getting more expensive, but the U.S. dollar is getting weaker. 

“As they print more and more dollars, the value of the dollar decreases, the assets around it are valued in dollars. Gold is increasing in price because the dollar is decreasing in value,” he said.

Dorrell said that as the dollar loses value and economic uncertainty increases, people are looking for alternative assets that will hold long-term value.

“Nothing goes up or down in a straight line, but gold in the long term has an excellent track record of preserving economic value. That’s why gold is the ultimate store of value asset,” Dorrell said.

That’s part of the reason why coin dealers, like Sturgeon, are almost sold out of gold and having a hard time getting it back on the shelf.

“Most of the gold I have already is spoken for, and I’ve just been asking every other local coin dealer in the area that if they get any gold that they want to unload to please bring it to me,” Sturgeon said.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trade Commission has warned that gold and other precious metals are highly volatile. It said past performance is not a good predictor of future returns.