For a few hundred meters, on a busy street in the city center, there are boutiques like Godot & fils, Or en cash, Comptoir national de l’or and, often, a few others with names that combine terms. golden and pompous – “gold”, “or”, “national”, “royal”… The proliferation of brands for buying and selling gold no longer goes unnoticed in metropolises and rich towns.
The three main specialized networks alone (Or en cash, Godot & fils, Comptoir national de l’or) have around 300 pharmacies, many of which are franchised. And the openings continue to arrive, throughout France, sharpening competition in terms of the amount of commissions charged. On rue Vivienne, in Paris, at the headquarters of the Godot & fils brand, whose interior carpentry highlights its reassuring age (1933), customers queue this Tuesday in early September. “We are ultra-competitive, our commissions are around 1.5% thanks to our transaction volume, praises Antoine Tahar, the agency’s director. Elsewhere, they may rise to 2.5% or 3.5%. »
He places a plastic bag on his desk and continues: “Look! These are our purchases of the last hour. At least 1 kilo of gold jewelry. The quantities have been abnormally high since Covid-19 in 2020, but lately they have accelerated even more. People are taking advantage of the peak in prices to sell. Gold leaves homes…” He also enters. Because the boom in the activity of gold traders is largely explained by their sales of gold coins, bars and bars. Arnaud Fhal, partner at Godot & fils, claims that he sells more yellow metal to individuals than he buys: “Thirty years of people making money investing in gold. Our clients love us! In 1994 it was worth 8,000 euros per kilo. Now it is 73,000 euros. Without a doubt we will reach more than 100,000 euros…”
The ounce of gold also reached a new all-time high of $2,704.89 on Friday, October 18, following the announcement of the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinouar in Gaza. It has gained about 30% since the beginning of the year.
“We are concrete”
And Arnaud Fhal lists the countless virtues of this safe haven in times of uncertainty, crisis and armed conflict: “Gold is easily exchanged for cash, unlike real estate. We are in the concrete, not in cryptocurrencies, we never talk about “hacking”. Customers want to be safe, they are afraid. Fear of inflation, debt, the collapse of banks… When they take the ingot in their hands, when they feel its density, they are impressed. » Solid, reassuring, now accessible to more budgets since there are bars of 5 grams, 2.5 grams, 1 gram, even (about 75 euros).
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