By Keith Walker

Published: April 2, 2008

A stronger dollar pushed gold below $900 to about $882 an ounce by mid-day Monday.

By mid-day Tuesday, the price of gold was $898 an ounce.

Scott Webb of Manassas Pawn, 8215 Sudley Road, said fluctuations will happen, but he expects the price to of gold to stabilize.

“I expect it to hover in the eight- to nine-hundred mark,” said Webb, who has been in the business since 1990. 

“It’s going to go up and down. It’s almost an inverse correlation to how the dollar is doing in the world market,” he said. “As the dollar rises gold will go down. Once the dollar starts weakening again, gold will go back up.”

Other gold buyers in the county also said the rising prices have brought in more gold.

“We’re doing about three times as much jewelry as we were doing six months ago,” said Paul Furman of Parkway Pawn in Woodbridge.

Additionally, Furman said he’s paying about four times as much for gold as he did six months ago.

Webb said people traditionally buy gold as a hedge against a bad economy.

The downturn in the local housing market and the ancillary businesses that support that market tend to drive people to sell their gold.

“The people who were working 70 hours a week building new homes are now down to 30 hours a week and all of a sudden they need a little extra to get them through,” Webb said. “They’re starting to run into harder and harder times as the jobs disappear.”

If someone is selling there are others buying, said Peter Grant, a senior metals analyst and account executive for the USA Gold Centennial Precious Metals, a Denver, Colo., company that sells gold, silver platinum and palladium.

Grant said people will continue to buy gold as a hedge against bad times.

He said if the country isn’t in a recession, it’s on the brink of one and economic uncertainty will make the buying and selling continue.

“One of the main things that’s been a huge driver in the gold market has been this general economic uncertainty,” he said. “We anticipate that investment interest in haven buying is going to remain pretty strong.”

Like Webb, Grant doesn’t expect gold to lose much value any time soon.

“I don’t think that there’s anything at this point to indicate that the trend has turned around,” he said.