Jewelers Plan for Holiday Priced in Volatile Gold

Gold is $1,300 off its January high and its price won’t stand still.

With the holidays a little over two months out, the volatility, for jewelry retailers, is almost worse than the soaring price.

“This year has not been better than last year, because of the gold price,” says Samer Kirolos of Sam’s Jewels NYC on W. 47th Street. Then he corrects himself. “It’s the fluctuation. The prices are not stable.”

Spot gold hit an all-time high of nearly $5,600 an ounce in January, before slumping back down and trudging sideways ever since. What happens next is a matter of speculation: Goldman Sachs sees $4,900 by year’s end; ING places it at $4,600.

Nobody expects a collapse, but everybody expects more swings, especially retailers who spoke to JCK.

Kirolos says two types of customers come to his booth in New York’s Diamond District.

“If a customer is only looking at price, they know it’s not stable—so they’re going to use the advantage they have,” he says. “But if a client is looking for what they want specifically, that’s an easier sale.”

Elsewhere in the Diamond District, Jake Duneier says the price of gold hasn’t shrunk the business so much as rewired how products get made.

As CEO of Clyde Duneier Inc., a fourth-generation manufacturer, he says weight, construction, and retail price are heavily considered at the very beginning of the design process, before a piece takes shape.

“Increasingly, we’re starting with where the retailer wants the product to land and working backwards,” he says.

That isn’t to say that everything should just be thinner.

“Sometimes it’s smarter construction, sometimes it’s changing proportions, and sometimes it’s just being more thoughtful about where you’re putting the gold.”

Of course, there’s a limit to what engineering and geometry can provide.

“We’d rather find smarter ways to engineer a piece than simply lower the quality to hit a price,” Duneier says. “There’s a point where taking another dollar out of a piece can cost you more in sales than it saves you in cost.”

At the counter, one type of gold rules.

“Fourteen, fourteen,” says Kevork Ohannessian, who runs The Diamond Doctor in Guttenberg, N.J.

He runs his shop out of a well-stocked brick storefront, yet much of his jewelry sales are built to order.

“Usually it’s special orders, custom rings, engagement rings, pendants,” he says, adding that consumers won’t compromise on 10k despite 14k being much pricier now.

For Kirolos, the biggest seller this year by far is the classic Miami Cuban link.

Men are buying heavy links, while women ask for the opposite (“box chains, and very dainty chains”).

In terms of style, perhaps the biggest casualty for gold necklaces is the herringbone, which appeared conspicuously absent from the array of booths in New York’s Diamond District.

“People have even stopped putting it in their stores,” Kirolos claims. “You just get stuck with them.” Fashion might be one reason, but for Kirolos, it’s physics. “Once it breaks, it’s done. You cannot repair it.”

Ohannessian’s shopping list for November runs on a similar instinct: “Less expensive stuff. Small stuff. Nothing big and heavy.” He says this isn’t just a 2026 adjustment; he’s been shifting his buying to more modest pieces for the holidays for a few years now.

He has a line for where jewelry sits when money gets tight: “Remember, we are the first one to fall down and the last one to get up.”

Both retailers expect custom work to carry December. For Ohannessian, it’s essentially the whole model, and the one shift he’s noticed this year is directional: more engagement rings.

Kirolos says his queue began filling in mid-September, which he describes as a tough time of the year in terms of workload.

What holds the business up, according to Ohannessian, is momentous occasions. Weddings, engagements, gifts. But jewelry bought for the simple pleasure of just owning it? “There’s nothing like that anymore,” he says.

People buy, he says, “because they need it. Or a gift to somebody.”

Looking at the same consumers, but from the manufacturing side, Duneier says nobody loves the current price environment for gold.

“Gold being expensive doesn’t make people stop wanting jewelry—it just raises the bar,” he says.

Kirolos has booked no travel for November or December, and his hedge is not to get too attached to the metal anyway.

“There’s a lot of room in this business. You just have to be creative. If a client is not looking for gold, you can look for watches,” says Kirolos.