Ordinarily, Philadelphia jeweler Matthew Sulby said, he'd be "feeling butterflies" about now, laying in inventory ahead of the exciting Christmas season that for decades made his cash register overflow.
Not so this year.
"I'm going to have a poor Christmas and I know it. Twenty years, and I never said that before. Christmas was always gravy for me. Now I need Christmas just to bail me out," said Sulby, 48, whose shop, Unclaimed Diamonds, glitters on Eighth Street near Sansom.
In a nation traumatized by uncertainty over the government's $700 billion economic rescue plan, Sulby's plea for relief is more Main Street prayer than Wall Street wish. With business down 50 percent, he can only hope that his holiday sales offset the five-figure sum Unclaimed Diamonds borrowed this year to make ends meet.
Retail industry analysts predict the season will post the weakest overall sales in 17 years.
That forecast may hit the 350 jewelry and precious-metals-related businesses in and around Philadelphia's Jewelers Row particularly hard. The niche market concentrated on Sansom Street between Seventh and Eighth bills itself as America's second-largest jewelry mart after New York City's diamond district.
Though jewelry is a luxury associated with wealth, many jewelers cater to the middle and working classes, said Joseph Datika, 58, owner of Kozin Jewelers, an Eighth Street shop that recently suspended its jewelry sales.
Six months ago, with business worse than flat, Datika emptied his display cases and stashed the merchandise in a safe. "Nobody had any money to buy," he said, "and they were just wasting my time."
Now he's buying - used gold and silver - from his increasingly hard-pressed clientele. He sells these castoffs, which jewelers call scrap, for a 2 percent profit to a smelter in Abington. Complicating these transactions, he said, is the volatililty in the price of gold. Although near $900 an ounce, a historic high, gold prices have been fluctuating wildly. From Monday to Tuesday this week, he said, the per-ounce price dropped $28. Yesterday, it closed at $836.60 an ounce, down $7.70 from Wednesday.
Sulby described his typical customer as maybe "living paycheck to paycheck" but nevertheless wanting some "status-affirming" luxuries.
Some who go to Datika bearing old bracelets, necklaces and rings "don't have money to fill up the tank, that's how bad the situation is," he said. "They take chains off their necks to pay the rent."
