nj.com / By Myles Ma / December 17, 2012 at 6:00 AM
BERGEN COUNTY — The Paramus Diamond Center might have closed by now if it weren’t a family business.
Ervin Bahdo, whose family owns the jewelry store, said working in a mom-and-pop shop has one fallback when times are tough: “You just don’t pay yourself,” he said.
The Paramus Diamond Center at Paramus Park Mall is one of many jewelry merchants being pushed to the edge by the soaring price of gold.
An ounce of gold cost $500 in 2005. Today, the same ounce would cost more than $1,700.
That’s great for traders, but bad news for merchants like Bahdo. The average person’s budget for jewelry is already squeezed these days.
“A lot of people don’t have jobs anymore and everything has gotten expensive, not just gold,” Bahdo said.
In response, Bahdo, whose family also owns stores in the Willowbrook Mall and in Edgewater, has pushed silver and costume jewelry instead of gold.
