Judging from a quick walk around South Coast Plaza mall in Costa Mesa this afternoon, silver, and not diamonds, are what people are buying this first Christmas during the Obama era.
I took a stroll by a few of the shops in the designer section of the mall. Nobody was in Mikimoto (known for pearls) mid afternoon just two days before Christmas. Nobody was in Bulgari, the very high-end Italian designer jeweler. Nobody was in Van Cleef and Arpels, the "legendary" French high-end jewelry store. Top drawer Japanese, Italian, and French stores, all empty just before Christmas.
But America’s Tiffany’s was jumping. Not the whole store though, however. The diamond display cases, for which Tiffany is best known, were almost without any customers. So were the platinum and gold cases. However, the silver cases, where Tiffany’s offers jewelry priced about $200 were exploding with activity (the lowest you can get something in the other cases is closer to $2,000). In fact, Tiffany’s was so loaded with people in the lower cost silver section, that the store had initiated crowd control measures. They were only allowing about 30 or so people at a time in that section of the store. I saw the same thing happening at Tiffany’s last Monday as well. At about 3:00 pm today, I counted over 90 people in a roped-off line waiting just to get into the silver section. They were all welcome to go to other parts of the store to shop for diamonds and gold, with no lines, but if you wanted silver, you had to get in a long, long line, and wait.
I think a few conclusions can be drawn. It seems to me that this Christmas, people are staying away from really expensive purchases. It looks like consumer spending is improving, but is definitely fickle. And if I was going to buy any stock this month, it would be in Tiffany’s and silver mines.