Wander through Warorot Market and you’ll find the familiar scene: residents queuing up to buy gold bars, clutching their savings and their anxieties in equal measure. The mood, as one might expect, is a mixture of pragmatism and mild alarm. People believe the conflict will drag on, that global prices will keep climbing, and that gold — reliable, glittering, reassuringly heavy — is the sensible place to park one’s money. Some are even trading in their jewellery for bars.
Chattapol Sunthornphaiboon, who runs Inthri Thong gold shop, thinks 80,000 baht per baht weight is not just possible but rather imminent. Unsurprisingly, that kind of talk is sending more people to the buying counter than the selling one — especially for gold bars, which, unlike jewellery, don’t come with craftsmanship fees eating into your investment.
A word of caution though: some shops have quietly suspended buy-backs for now, protecting their own liquidity while they watch global markets. Hard to blame them. With chatter among operators that prices could eventually hit 100,000 baht, everyone — shopkeepers and customers alike — seems to be playing a careful, watchful game.
