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In fatter days, this was Custom Jewelers, supplier of tennis bracelets and engagement rings on layaway for Christmas, on a rule of thumb that seemed impractical, even then:

Sink two months’ pay into that diamond to punctuate the question popped under the tree. Will you?

Sorry. Not this year, darling.

Not hardly.

And though business is steady at the store renamed the Greensboro Gold Exchange, in what used to be a bank near the corner of Merritt Drive and High Point Road, the walk-in customers aren’t buying. They’re selling.

In the sidewalk version of the New York Mercantile Exchange, they’re selling the commodity that always grows solid in shaky economic times. And that is gold, which made its biggest dollar jump in history — by $100 an ounce — the day the Fed bailed out insurance behemoth AIG.

Yet in the sidewalk version, gold doesn’t come in “bullion,” a vaguely unappetizing term, but in its more familiar forms.

Class rings sized when the future was flush with possibilities but that no longer fit. Herringbone gold chains that must have been a good look at some point. Watches that stopped keeping time long ago and sat forgotten in a drawer, until now.

All these dispensable baubles are useful again — to be melted down in favor of something you can hold onto.

Or try to hold onto, anyway.

“Mortgages, car payments, insurance, stretched-out credit cards. People are getting more desperate,” jeweler Roger Holley was saying Friday, looking out on a cold rain.

“Just look at the price of gas across the street. I was over at Kangaroo yesterday, and the pumps were so slow, it seemed like a dollar a minute. They were running out of gas.”

In a building that was once a Southeastern Bank branch, the walk-in steel vault is masked by a mirror but still in use. It no longer holds paper currency, however, but more universal coins of the realm.

Along with the increasingly valuable gold and silver and nickel, which has been crushed up to be sent to the refinery, is the leftover jewelry store inventory that Holley and a bilingual assistant dutifully put in the glass display cases every morning, then store back in the safe every night.

They drape necklaces around headless velvet busts. Set out delicate earrings and loose sapphires and emeralds, just in case.

“It’s almost like a museum. It’s nice to look at,” the jeweler mused. “But nobody’s buying it. They’re that short on cash.”

In fact, since the Greensboro Gold Exchange opened Feb. 11, just in time for Valentine’s Day, jewelry sales have accounted for only 4 percent of the store’s income. Holley still does jewelry repair, but most of the customers bringing in broken items just want hard cash.

But first, the acid test. The jeweler rubs the metal on a carbon block to leave a small trace on the stone. He then spreads a drop of a certain hydrochloric and nitric acid solution, depending on how many karats he is testing for, and watches to see how the acid reacts to the metal filings.

Sometimes, with the going rate soaring at $880 per ounce Friday as investors continued to flee the stock market, Holley’s customers have more valuable gold than they realize.

But sometimes, the coin toss comes up tails, and Holley’s acid test shows the jewelry is worthless.

“They’ll come in with a baby on one arm, and you know they need it,” he said, “And it turns out to be costume jewelry. You feel sorry for them.”

From under the counter, he pulls out a box of just such jewelry people decided to throw away on the spot, after realizing it was fake. There are earrings, bracelets, a knotted herringbone chain or two. They look tarnished and dull this way, but in the right light, they must have glittered.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com