Prior to the onset of the financial crisis, buying and selling people's old gold jewellery was seen almost as a disreputable thing.
A lot of people saw it as being related to crooked pawn shop owners who preyed on people who were suffering from economic strife, and forced them to sell their family heirlooms at a fraction of their true cost.
However, then the recession hit, and everyone suddenly realized that they had liquidity issues.
What can one do in such a situation, other than sell all the old junk that they have lying around and hope that it will provide the kind of cash that is necessary to escape from the depths of being poor or broke? And if that means selling your family jewelry that was passed down to you from generation to generation, then so be it.
This is not an easy decision to make, but once it is made, people deserve the right to deal with reputable dealers, rather than the back rooms of shady pawn shops.
It makes sense, then, that so many gold scrap dealers arose from nowhere to provide this very valuable service to the men and women who were suffering from the economic downturn.
And, of course, a lot of these dealers and gold merchants made a lot of money themselves in the process - a win-win situation.
However, it remains to be seen whether these boom times for the gold industry will continue for much longer.
We are now in late 2010, and many economic forecasts are saying that we are now exiting the tail end of the recession.
If a recovery is indeed taking hold, there may not be a need for as many gold dealers for much longer.