Once a handsome, genteel suburb, Greenwich, Connecticut, has fallen into disrepair over the past year, as its residents struggle with increases in crime, unemployment, and vermin. Now, a new horror: Some of the city’s relatively poor denizens have taken to wrapping themselves in last season’s Chanel and selling their gold jewelry on the side of the highway. “They show up dressed very fancy, maybe wearing their Rolexes,” the president of Westport, Connecticut–based Cash for Gold, which has been holding appraisal sessions at the Hyatt Hotel off 95, tells Bloomberg. But one look at the sellers’ hollow eyes and starved bodies, and he can see the truth: They’re desperate. Selling this jewelry is their last hope. The gold is the last match in their bundle.
Take Jill Kalman, 47, of Norwalk, who showed up at a recent event, where she sold a locket from her college days and a ring of her father’s.
“I’m trying to fund a dream,” the communications consultant said of her plan to find voiceover work. “I wanted to be the next Meredith Viera [sic], but I am getting a little long in the tooth.”
Oh God, the pain. The strife. Gets us right in the heart.
Greenwich Jewelry Turns to Cash as Gold Reaches $1,000 an Ounce [Bloomberg]
