Speaker 1: Hey, they're aud Loots listeners. It's Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: And Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 1: We are very excited to announce that Oudlots is going
Speaker 1: to Washington That's right.
Speaker 2: For the first time, we are going to do a
Speaker 2: live public Odd Lots recording in our nation's capital. That's
Speaker 2: going to be March twelfth in Washington, DC at the
Speaker 2: Miracle Theater and guests will be announced in the coming days,
Speaker 2: but in the meantime you can find a ticket link
Speaker 2: at Bloomberg dot com, slash odd.
Speaker 3: Lots, Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: Tracy. Gold has had a really good year.
Speaker 1: Here's a question. Here's a question.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the last times we talked about gold, you
Speaker 1: made fun of me for being a gold bug. Are
Speaker 1: you going to start this episode out by doing the
Speaker 1: same thing.
Speaker 2: No, you're completely vindicated. Gold has done really well over
Speaker 2: the long term. Over the last several years, it's been
Speaker 2: one of the best performing assets. It's stable. I take
Speaker 2: back everything I ever implied negatively about gold.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be nice to the gold now, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: Out, but it's look at the chart's great.
Speaker 1: I will say I'm sort of an accidental gold bug.
Speaker 1: It has not been a conscious choice to accumulate, but
Speaker 1: it has turned out really well. So gold keeps hitting
Speaker 1: record after record. As we're recording this, I think it's
Speaker 1: at two thousand and six hundred announced.
Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty six forty nine. It had gotten as high
Speaker 2: as twenty eight hundred almost in October. But it's been
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the last couple of years have been phenomenal.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. And the other really interesting thing is like
Speaker 1: it started going up even as the Federal Reserve was
Speaker 1: raising rates, which is something that you don't normally see,
Speaker 1: like normally has that inverse relationship to rates, that negative correlation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I guess the demand has just been so strong
Speaker 1: that it doesn't really matter this time around.
Speaker 2: Can I say something? So you bring up the sort
Speaker 2: of FED connection, et cetera. And so I want to
Speaker 2: learn more about gold, but I don't really have much
Speaker 2: interest in just talking to like another gold macro guy,
Speaker 2: because I don't know what they say. They always sell
Speaker 2: the same story. It's like inflation and currency debasement and
Speaker 2: all that. Maybe that's all true, but I sort of like,
Speaker 2: I want to talk gold, but it's just like I
Speaker 2: sort of felt going into this conversation that we can't
Speaker 2: just talk to someone who's just, you know, going to
Speaker 2: tell the same story they could have told about gold
Speaker 2: every single day for the last twenty years.
Speaker 1: I think it's a very valid feeling to have. There
Speaker 1: is something like physical about gold. Obviously, it's shiny, it's
Speaker 1: fun to hold. Even like silver, you can have fun
Speaker 1: stacking those coins, as I know personally, So it makes
Speaker 1: sense to talk to someone who's in the physical market.
Speaker 2: We're gonna talk about what's going on in the gold market,
Speaker 2: but actually get into why people love gold so much,
Speaker 2: and why people want to be covered and why right now,
Speaker 2: why right now, why people want to accumulate gold, have
Speaker 2: it in their saves, have it on their person, et cetera.
Speaker 2: We really do have the perfect guest. We're going to
Speaker 2: be speaking with Max sud Aga, Johnny Max Aga. Johnny.
Speaker 2: He is the founder of Tracks NYC, New York City
Speaker 2: based jewelry dealer, and listeners might not We actually had
Speaker 2: him on the podcast once in early twenty twenty, and
Speaker 2: listeners might know him if they ever saw the movie
Speaker 2: Uncut Gems, one of my favorite movies of the last
Speaker 2: few years, because he actually was in the movie. He
Speaker 2: played I guess kind of himself to some extent in
Speaker 2: the movie. I think the character's name was Yussie in
Speaker 2: the Diamond District, in the gold District in Manhattan. And
Speaker 2: we're going to talk all these gold with Max masud
Speaker 2: Aka Yussi. Thank you so much for coming back on
Speaker 2: oud laws.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me for a second time.
Speaker 2: What's your life been like the last four years? How
Speaker 2: did that all change your life?
Speaker 4: Am I the od It's only been up from there
Speaker 4: A little movie that you appeared in. The movie did good,
Speaker 4: My odd lots did good, other podcasts did good, and
Speaker 4: all the social media also it did really good for me.
Speaker 1: Here's an important question. Did you bring me the diamond
Speaker 1: encrusted Ferbie?
Speaker 4: In all reality? It wasn't even diamonds in that thing.
Speaker 4: It was movie magic.
Speaker 1: Honestly, I would take the brass version too.
Speaker 4: But it might not be good for your skin.
Speaker 2: But oh really, what does breast do your skin?
Speaker 1: It turns it green?
Speaker 4: She got it, she knows it.
Speaker 1: All all women know this. The big difference between gold
Speaker 1: and brass.
Speaker 2: So other than the fact that gold doesn't turn your
Speaker 2: skin green, people, what is it that people love about gold?
Speaker 2: Why do people why do people buy gold from you?
Speaker 4: Well, gold is for people who have money to burn, right,
Speaker 4: you know, if you're you could go back thousands of years,
Speaker 4: if you're an Egyptian pharaoh and you're not starving, you
Speaker 4: have any of labor and grain and land and property.
Speaker 4: What don't you have? Well, I guess I want to
Speaker 4: make a gold casket, a gold esophagus, so to speak,
Speaker 4: and maybe some peasants might find some in the field
Speaker 4: and I'll give him the grain he needs, and he'll
Speaker 4: give me the gold. So it accumulates with people who
Speaker 4: are not struggling, and that turns it into a status symbol.
Speaker 1: You know, Joe, I remember you actually wrote a really
Speaker 1: good piece about the history of gold and how it
Speaker 1: was sort of intermingled with power and this idea that
Speaker 1: you know, like you needed a big military basically to
Speaker 1: go out and get gold, and you needed a lot
Speaker 1: of labor to dig it up, and so it became
Speaker 1: very much associated with power.
Speaker 2: It's like a proof of work, right, Yeah, you can,
Speaker 2: like even in the bitcoin sense. Also, you know, one thing, Tracy.
Speaker 2: You know, Max mentioned the Pharaohs. Gold doesn't tarnish, right,
Speaker 2: So it's like the historically, going back thousands of years,
Speaker 2: it was associated with the God, just like one commodity
Speaker 2: that is truly immortal in a way that most things
Speaker 2: that we find on earth are.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have a really dumb question, though. When gold
Speaker 1: is hitting records like it is right now, do you
Speaker 1: see more or less demand for jewelry?
Speaker 4: I mean, it's kind of stable, to be honest. You know,
Speaker 4: when I started my business in two thousand and four,
Speaker 4: gold was about three hundred dollars in ounce. Now it's
Speaker 4: twenty five hundred and twenty six hundred, fluctuating over there.
Speaker 4: I've watched it the whole way. It's increase in price
Speaker 4: does have a little bit of effect on a demand,
Speaker 4: but not that much. But you know, at some point
Speaker 4: people can't afford what they want. Back in two thousand
Speaker 4: and four, you could stack yourself with gold fourteen carrot
Speaker 4: at twelve dollars a gram or whatever it was. It
Speaker 4: was a great time to really stack gold. But now
Speaker 4: your dollar doesn't go so far and you can't really
Speaker 4: have as much as you'd like.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, in two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: if you bought one hundred dollars worth of gold, you
Speaker 2: had one hundred dollars worth of gold. In twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: if you buy one hundred dollars worth of gold, you
Speaker 2: still have one hundred dollars. So in a way, no
Speaker 2: o like for real, like if you want to like
Speaker 2: convert your dollars into something else, it does the same
Speaker 2: job at twenty six forty nine as it does a three.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well listen until the guy that bought it at
Speaker 4: two thousand and four walks through the door and his
Speaker 4: hundred dollars worth of gold looks like a bigger pile
Speaker 4: than your one hundred dollars worth of gold. But whatever,
Speaker 4: you know, money's a game. Gold is one way to
Speaker 4: play it. It's a safe way to play it. I
Speaker 4: love it because I have a jewelry store full of
Speaker 4: goal chains and gold jewelry, and as the price goes up,
Speaker 4: what I can't sell, I melt and I still make
Speaker 4: my money back, and that's a fantastic aspect of it.
Speaker 4: And it never let me down, and I don't think
Speaker 4: it ever let anybody in history down. So you can't
Speaker 4: really go wrong with it. You might not be the
Speaker 4: biggest winner like you are with the cryptos or whatever.
Speaker 4: It is. Somebody who bought you know, a pizza pie
Speaker 4: for fifteen or twenty bitcoin back in twenty eleven and
Speaker 4: now could have been a billionaire or whatever. Yeah, it
Speaker 4: might not do that, but it'll keep you safe and
Speaker 4: sound and happy.
Speaker 1: Do you feel competition with the crypt I mean.
Speaker 4: I don't want gold to go up. You know that
Speaker 4: doesn't do anything for me. I know it will eventually,
Speaker 4: but yeah, crypto had a major impact. Who knows if
Speaker 4: crypto would never Satoshi Nakamoto never bothered to do whatever
Speaker 4: he was doing or whatever that was. What would the
Speaker 4: gold be right now if it wasn't trillions of dollars
Speaker 4: literally inside of crazy cryptos?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it could be up more. What what are people
Speaker 2: into these days?
Speaker 4: What are people into these days?
Speaker 2: So when they come into your store, what are they like?
Speaker 2: How much is it like the crazy diamond and crusted
Speaker 2: ferbies that Tracy didn't get today versus just wanting a
Speaker 2: nice tasteful chain versus So what's what's that?
Speaker 4: I mean, listen, everybody everybody has their own little need,
Speaker 4: you know, they want they want to give a gift
Speaker 4: for a girl. So they might want to be able
Speaker 4: to buy a tennis bracelet. Okay, they have a girlfriend,
Speaker 4: or they have a side chick, or they have a
Speaker 4: baby mama. I don't know what their situation is, but
Speaker 4: you gotta buy or something, all right, So you gotta
Speaker 4: go and you gotta buy it. Could be a tennis
Speaker 4: bracelet that will be with done.
Speaker 2: Call they tell you if it's for the side chick,
Speaker 2: will they say that, by the way, this is for
Speaker 2: the side Uh?
Speaker 4: I could usually tell what's going on.
Speaker 1: Is the bracelet for the side chicks the one for
Speaker 1: the wife?
Speaker 4: You know that varies from customer to customer. Put it
Speaker 4: that way, okay.
Speaker 1: Can I ask the basic question though? Why why do
Speaker 1: you think gold prices happen going up?
Speaker 4: Well, listen, I mean, you know, we gotta do the math,
Speaker 4: all right. It's one thing I learned since the last
Speaker 4: time I was here to today. A lot of people,
Speaker 4: maybe they might be in a beautiful building like we
Speaker 4: are now, are in a professional field, but not doing
Speaker 4: the mathematics here at all. All right, thirty six trillion
Speaker 4: dollars and that one trillion dollars in interest you got
Speaker 4: China buying it up like crazy. So I hear Central
Speaker 4: Banks this that if you look into numbers, you're going
Speaker 4: to find out what's really going on. And it's like
Speaker 4: the Wizard of Oz out there. You really don't want
Speaker 4: to look behind the curtain here because I don't know
Speaker 4: what you're gonna find there and how this is all
Speaker 4: going to come to a head as things that get turbulent,
Speaker 4: you know, when in the new administration or what have you,
Speaker 4: whatever you want to call it, and cryptos and quantum
Speaker 4: computing and robots and this and that. I don't really
Speaker 4: know how it's all going to play out, but I
Speaker 4: know that if anything happens, I have my safe, my
Speaker 4: combination to my safe, my security system, and my physical
Speaker 4: assets that I can rely on. So that's what it
Speaker 4: is for me. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I feel like there is a tension there though, because
Speaker 1: like if I imagine myself coming into a jewelry store and
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I'm gonna buy a gold chain because
Speaker 1: you know, it's a safe store of value and things
Speaker 1: are uncertain right now, Like that's okay, But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, I'm buying like something that's pretty frivolous, right.
Speaker 1: It's like a it's a gold chain. What am I
Speaker 1: really going to do with as it should be?
Speaker 4: Frivolous? I mean, you're not supposed to be on the
Speaker 4: edge of starvation, you know, struggling against all odds. I
Speaker 4: need choose and a winter coat and coal for my.
Speaker 1: Furnace, you know, prioritize the gold.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're supposed to be productive, successful people in a
Speaker 4: modern world with surplus. Right.
Speaker 1: Wait, but when people come into your store, do they
Speaker 1: talk to you about why they're buying gold? Do they
Speaker 1: say stuff like I'm worried about inflation?
Speaker 4: Yeah, some people do. I mean there's somebody that came in.
Speaker 4: I'll never forget him. He was listening to what I
Speaker 4: was saying and he came in. This is when gold
Speaker 4: was eighteen fifty and he was painting houses and he
Speaker 4: bought like ten ounces. So he saved up the money
Speaker 4: eighteen five hundred dollars or whatever it was, and he
Speaker 4: saved up the money and he said, you know what,
Speaker 4: I'm tired of losing my money. I'm tired of spending.
Speaker 4: He bought ten ounces of gold because of what I said.
Speaker 4: And you know wherever he is now if he held
Speaker 4: out to that gold, now it's you know, twenty six thousand,
Speaker 4: five hundred or whatever. So he did great, and he
Speaker 4: just bought ten ten ounces of you know, one ounce
Speaker 4: each of Bouyon bars. But I feel like he even
Speaker 4: got short changed. I think the gold price after that
Speaker 4: ridiculous pandemic with all that printing, should be way higher
Speaker 4: and then even twenty six fifty. But I'm not looking
Speaker 4: for that to happen anytime soon.
Speaker 2: One thing that I always liked on your Instagram page,
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure if you've done one recently. Used
Speaker 2: to do like these really fun like sort of like
Speaker 2: let's take a look at geopolitics and like the charts
Speaker 2: and the maps. Have you still been doing that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that's not like the I found that
Speaker 4: to be very entertaining. Well you guys, you guys, there's
Speaker 4: you know, a little smart and stuff like that. But
Speaker 4: for the average person in the crowd, sometimes I have
Speaker 4: to do something a little bit more.
Speaker 2: I remember, like years and I don't know what year
Speaker 2: it was when you had like the chart of Iran
Speaker 2: and the chart, you know, and it's differently tensions in
Speaker 2: the Middle East.
Speaker 4: I do that on tracks news. Yeah, yeah, I have
Speaker 4: a little side channel where I talk about what's really
Speaker 4: going on in the world. But when it comes to
Speaker 4: my main pages, I want to I have to make money. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: So I have to go and I have to stick
Speaker 4: around the materials, the diamonds, the sapphires, the gold, and
Speaker 4: I have to market my jewelry to the masses in
Speaker 4: a clever way. Make my money. Buy more gold chains.
Speaker 4: I'm placing in order for half a million for seven
Speaker 4: kilos okay of gold chains. I'm gonna flood out my
Speaker 4: shop and I'm gonna hunker down and I'm gonna wait
Speaker 4: for it all to end.
Speaker 1: What are your security costs right now?
Speaker 4: Well, listen, I mean I'm in the middle of the
Speaker 4: Diamond district. You know, my rent is about fifty thousand
Speaker 4: dollars a month. But that has three spaces up you know,
Speaker 4: in fourteen A, which is on the thirteenth floor, and
Speaker 4: then I have a mezzanine, and then I have a storefront.
Speaker 4: And luckily there's you know, police cars there and two
Speaker 4: precincts nearby. I'm next to Fox News and Rockefeller Center,
Speaker 4: so I'm in a safe place. If if there's ever
Speaker 4: was a place to stash gold, this is the place
Speaker 4: to do it. So I'm gonna take advantage of that fact.
Speaker 2: What what would you leave for the day? Like how
Speaker 2: big is that protocol of like locking up everything?
Speaker 4: Right? Well, my staff does it. I have cameras. I
Speaker 4: see what's going on, and I have It's like a
Speaker 4: casino or a bank. If you make a proper protocol,
Speaker 4: you don't have to sit here and worry about it
Speaker 4: so much.
Speaker 2: When you talk about buying half a million, seven kilos
Speaker 2: worth of gold making a half a million dollar order,
Speaker 2: what's that? What's that?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Who are the big players in the sort of wholesale
Speaker 2: gold district?
Speaker 4: And for anybody doing the math that's in fourteen characters,
Speaker 4: they're going to seven kilos, they're going to be think
Speaker 4: and this guy's some not on the up and up.
Speaker 4: That's coming from different chain manufacturers in Italy sometimes could
Speaker 4: be Indonesia or somewhere else, and they have factories and
Speaker 4: they source their gold however which way they do it.
Speaker 4: You know, I've been to some of these factories. They're
Speaker 4: beautiful factories, family run. But I like to buy my
Speaker 4: gold in gold chains. Now if I buy gold bars
Speaker 4: or grain, and I do that often as well. I
Speaker 4: do that right on the street on forty seventh Street
Speaker 4: with several different vendors there that are really really cool
Speaker 4: people worth the visiting and learning about.
Speaker 1: What do higher gold prices actually do for your profit
Speaker 1: margins because I imagine, like the actual manufacturing cost is
Speaker 1: probably the biggest chunk.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they know that's not the manufacturing cost is not
Speaker 4: the biggest chunk. I mean, the gold, the material is
Speaker 4: the biggest by far, and it eats away and then
Speaker 4: you have to raise your prices. But jewelry is the
Speaker 4: only industry in which you raise your prices and sales
Speaker 4: could go up because people associate that with a higher quality, right,
Speaker 4: you know, they'll look if people don't know anything about it,
Speaker 4: they'll say, hey, this sapphire is thirty thousand, this one's
Speaker 4: twenty thousand, so that sapphire must be better than this one,
Speaker 4: you know. And that's how people think about jewelry, and
Speaker 4: that's the psychology behind it. And you know that works
Speaker 4: in our favor if we're building a jewelry brand or whatever.
Speaker 2: So, by the way, we're recording this on January seventh.
Speaker 2: Just today, Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta CEO, the Facebook Guy,
Speaker 2: released a video and about content moderation and a number
Speaker 2: of people noticed he was wearing a nine hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars watch. His style has changed. Yep, what do you
Speaker 2: is there been? Have you noticed a shift in general
Speaker 2: sort of public styles of people these days maybe versus
Speaker 2: say ten years ago, of wanting to wear their wealth
Speaker 2: on their wrist, around their neck more.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, the people are growing up. Think things are
Speaker 4: definitely changing and people are flashing a little bit more.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, there was the era of Steve
Speaker 4: Jobs where he was the real leader and he was,
Speaker 4: you know, the same pair of jeans and sneakers, New
Speaker 4: Balance sneakers, very plain, and you know, once he passed,
Speaker 4: other people are stepping out and the watch game is
Speaker 4: I guess something that caught marks and he's in it
Speaker 4: now and he's playing along, which is great for business.
Speaker 4: And you know, that's really what's been going on. And
Speaker 4: I think that's a great trend. A lot of people
Speaker 4: wearing different time pieces. There's way more information about them now.
Speaker 4: The market has kind of been democratized a little bit
Speaker 4: where people could look up different watches and find their
Speaker 4: certain styling. And this guy is stepping out, he's stepping
Speaker 4: up and he's changing his personality. Maybe he did ayahuasca.
Speaker 4: I don't really know what got into him, but it's
Speaker 4: good for business, so I'm happy about it.
Speaker 1: He definitely had a little makeover recently. You can tell
Speaker 1: we've been talking a lot about gold, but we should
Speaker 1: talk about diamonds as well, because like gold's been going up,
Speaker 1: diamond prices have been going down for a while. And
Speaker 1: I imagine some of it is, you know, the pressure
Speaker 1: from lab grown diamonds, but like what's going.
Speaker 4: On there, Well, the lab grown is in the market
Speaker 4: and it's weighing it down heavily because you can't tell
Speaker 4: the difference. And even I've buy them sometimes and you
Speaker 4: know the real challenges it used to be able to sell.
Speaker 4: You know, S I, two, I one J color as well.
Speaker 4: These are all the gradings of the stone.
Speaker 1: Keep so you didn't you buy an engagement ring and
Speaker 1: forgot it.
Speaker 2: It was a family early so I never had to
Speaker 2: go to the lucky then in those days.
Speaker 4: So the lower you know, lower grade stones, they used
Speaker 4: to play a part. But now why would I buy
Speaker 4: a lower grade stone? Right? It's here's a decent example.
Speaker 4: Why would I buy a Honda Accord built from a
Speaker 4: factory when I could buy a lab grown Mercedes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 4: Okay, you know, so it's.
Speaker 2: Really it kills the low end. Yeah, if you're going
Speaker 2: to go to the low end anyway, you don't really.
Speaker 4: But once you take out the low end, the high
Speaker 4: end is coming with it and all sorts of things
Speaker 4: are going down. But natural is still natural. Natural gems
Speaker 4: are a different story.
Speaker 2: So the natural gyms are for the wife.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're for their wives, and there for a way
Speaker 4: for you to spend money.
Speaker 1: But wait, my engagement ring is actually an aquamarine. It's
Speaker 1: not a diamond. But this reminds me, like, do you
Speaker 1: see other types of stones coming into fashion, like the
Speaker 1: more natural gemstones if maybe, like the lab grown diamonds
Speaker 1: are kind of muddy in that market.
Speaker 4: Not yet nobody really knows what to do, okay, So
Speaker 4: the engagement marriage these are you know, the highest societal
Speaker 4: matters that one can discuss, and society doesn't know how
Speaker 4: to decide that. There has to be some leadership. Someone
Speaker 4: has to get engaged with the sapphire to start a trend,
Speaker 4: some major celebrity or you know, God forbid. Malania gets
Speaker 4: a divorce and gets a new husband. He buys her
Speaker 4: a ruby. I think we'll see it.
Speaker 1: Well Kate Middleton satire. Yeah that was a big deal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a big deal. And that's the way they
Speaker 4: do it over there, because that was kind of Princess
Speaker 4: Diana had, I think a safire. So I think that
Speaker 4: was the trend, but it never really caught on into
Speaker 4: the masses. Just yet, it's still diamonds.
Speaker 1: Wait, why do things like fall in and out of
Speaker 1: fashion like that? Like why why did diamonds have such
Speaker 1: a hold on the engagement market.
Speaker 4: Still, that's a fantastic question. I mean this was you know,
Speaker 4: propagandized by de beers at some point of time, somebody's
Speaker 4: brainchild to be able to show commitment. And it also
Speaker 4: the shoe fit, so they wore it. You know, she
Speaker 4: got a one character, she's got a one and a half. Well,
Speaker 4: my husband bought me a three character, but yours a Jkuller.
Speaker 4: And it's just it's just a game for people to
Speaker 4: play and for a way to have the guy spend money.
Speaker 1: One more diamond question, but like, how come diamonds? My
Speaker 1: impression is notoriously if you get a giant diamond engagement ring,
Speaker 1: like yes, okay, that's great, but if you break up
Speaker 1: or you divorce and you want to go sell it,
Speaker 1: it immediately loses a ton of value. Why is it
Speaker 1: that diamonds never really like transformed into a store of
Speaker 1: value in the same way that gold.
Speaker 4: It's a luxury product. Okay, listen, another example that I
Speaker 4: give most of my clients, right, you could buy you
Speaker 4: could go to the liquor store. You have a sixty dollars,
Speaker 4: you could buy a bottle of champagne, or you could
Speaker 4: buy a bottle of Jamaican rum. Okay, So one is
Speaker 4: going to get you way more drunk for way longer
Speaker 4: than the other. You know, Champagne, half the bottle is
Speaker 4: gonna fly out when you open it, half the content
Speaker 4: to the bottle. But Jamaican run rum, you could sit
Speaker 4: under a bridge for a month and you know whatever.
Speaker 4: So the fact of the matter is is one is
Speaker 4: a luxury product for celebration and one is not. Okay,
Speaker 4: if you really want, you know, if you're somewhere in
Speaker 4: the Middle East or in Asia and you're getting married,
Speaker 4: you're gonna cover your wife in gold so she could
Speaker 4: feel secure about her you know, marriage or divorce or
Speaker 4: commitment or whatever. But here in the West, you know,
Speaker 4: at the top one percent of society or civilization or
Speaker 4: whatever it might be. It's a different trend, and you're
Speaker 4: buying something that is frivolous and luxurious. If you really
Speaker 4: want something that's going to keep your value, give your
Speaker 4: wife a gold bar or you know, you're not going
Speaker 4: to see in some you know, on Park Avenue at
Speaker 4: some a major wedding hall or whatever, a wife covered
Speaker 4: in gold coins. Okay, all right, you know like you would.
Speaker 1: Maybe one day maybe one.
Speaker 4: Day, yeah, after you know, after the economy really I'm
Speaker 4: gonna takes a noose dives then yeah. Maybe. So that's
Speaker 4: the reason.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about watches a little more. You sell watchers.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at a ninety two thousand, fully iced out
Speaker 2: sky Dweller Oyster Perpetual roll X watch on your website.
Speaker 2: What's a cool watch brand these days? I mean Rolllexes
Speaker 2: are always what are people into?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 2: What's the hot thing in all?
Speaker 4: Well, the big boys obviously protect Philippe, Automar and Rolex,
Speaker 4: and then if you really want to stand out, you
Speaker 4: might get a brigade or you know, Cartiers or Cartier
Speaker 4: as they like to pronounce it is something that's also cute.
Speaker 4: But aside from that, Listen, you're getting a watch not
Speaker 4: to tell the time. Let's just keep it real, okay,
Speaker 4: You're getting a watch to have a status symbol. So
Speaker 4: they call rolexes the new money. When you get your
Speaker 4: first real money, you get yourself a rolex because you
Speaker 4: know it's going to do the job. You've arrived, yes,
Speaker 4: and then from there you go out further and further
Speaker 4: into something that might be a little bit you know,
Speaker 4: I'm unknown, but amongst the community of people in the watches,
Speaker 4: it's respected. And there's definitely several different brands like that,
Speaker 4: and none of them come to mind at the moment.
Speaker 4: But you know, I usually rely on my friend Roman
Speaker 4: Scharf when it comes to watches. He's an expert in
Speaker 4: that field.
Speaker 1: I used to know a big luxury watch collector in Appudapi.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's unsurprising, and I never really understood the thesis
Speaker 1: of like speculating on watches, but he was big into that.
Speaker 1: He would buy and then he would trade and sell.
Speaker 1: Is that an investment thesis that you buy into or
Speaker 1: not so much?
Speaker 4: You know, Like at my store, I feel happiest when
Speaker 4: I have a million in watches and a million in
Speaker 4: gold or something like that. Okay, so you can't ever
Speaker 4: go wrong with those assets. And they do Roles just
Speaker 4: raise their list prices. So the prices went up on
Speaker 4: all the watches, and anybody who has a Rolex gained,
Speaker 4: and anybody who didn't is going to have to be,
Speaker 4: you know, get their dollars up even higher to get one.
Speaker 4: So you can't go wrong with some of those assets.
Speaker 4: And you go look, you know, you'll see some run
Speaker 4: into a YouTube video or something like that. Somebody who
Speaker 4: bought a Rolex straight out of the army in nineteen
Speaker 4: fifty eight or nineteen sixty three, and they bought it
Speaker 4: and they kept a box and papers, and they bought
Speaker 4: it for six hundred and fifty dollars, and today it's
Speaker 4: worth a quarter of a million or one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty thousand or sixty nice. Yeah, I mean, you know
Speaker 4: a lot of the things if you go and buy
Speaker 4: them today, and you know you're a young person, if
Speaker 4: you're a young person listening to this or's you know,
Speaker 4: a few might be. And you go and you buy
Speaker 4: Rolex and you don't take the stickers off, and you
Speaker 4: buy a limited edition and you keep it there and
Speaker 4: then you're sixty five years old. I know it seems
Speaker 4: like a long long time from now, but that day
Speaker 4: is gonna come. And if you pull that Rolex out
Speaker 4: of that closet or out of that safe, you're gonna
Speaker 4: really be happy with what's going on. And that's that's
Speaker 4: the nature watches, because these companies and these brands do
Speaker 4: something special for you know, their time pieces, and it's
Speaker 4: and it works.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you a sort of real meat
Speaker 2: and potatoes business question, but going back to safety and
Speaker 2: security and uppers and like you probably have to like
Speaker 2: hiring can't be people for your store, can't be like
Speaker 2: totally trivial because you have to be able to trust them, etc.
Speaker 2: That must be a huge part of it. You've jailed
Speaker 2: it what you've seen. I was talking to my barber
Speaker 2: recently and he was saying he had a hard time
Speaker 2: hiring these days, and I said, well, what's the hard
Speaker 2: part is that? Like, is it hard to find people
Speaker 2: who can cut here? And he said, no, I'm actually
Speaker 2: just that's basically what he said. He said, the hard
Speaker 2: part is basically like just finding people who are sort
Speaker 2: of normal and put together. And I'm curious, like from
Speaker 2: your perspective, like what you've seen on that front.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, New York City is a run down
Speaker 4: in a lot of different ways. So there's a lot
Speaker 4: of people that I mean, you got to sort through
Speaker 4: a lot of people to find a good quality human being. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 4: A lot of them are usually going to be immigrants
Speaker 4: that are coming here from all over the world that
Speaker 4: are really looking to work and have a real work
Speaker 4: ethic that they're expected to work. People that grow up
Speaker 4: in this society want to get high. Work is something
Speaker 4: that for them to just an obstacle for them to
Speaker 4: overcome for them to enjoy themselves and binge on Netflix?
Speaker 2: Have you seen the desire to get high? And I
Speaker 2: mean here in the literal sense of drug use? Has
Speaker 2: that changed a lot into twenty years that you've had
Speaker 2: tracks and having to deal with it?
Speaker 4: Well, listen, you know I smoke periodically and so on
Speaker 4: and so forth, but I actually I have to make
Speaker 4: sure that I fulfill my obligations to my business. All right.
Speaker 4: Alcohol is a drug that people partake in after work
Speaker 4: or so on and so forth. But people have become abusive,
Speaker 4: and you know, it's not just the drugs, it's the
Speaker 4: theft and the overall lack of work ethic in today's society.
Speaker 4: They just don't understand it. And you know, people are
Speaker 4: doing the bare minimum where they're pretending to work or
Speaker 4: so on and so forth, and the moment you check
Speaker 4: on their work, that's a serious problem. Luckily, the AI
Speaker 4: and the robots are coming, so they could finally go
Speaker 4: to Central Park and play, you know, frisbee or whatever
Speaker 4: they really want to do. But it's it's quite tragic,
Speaker 4: and those people need to be scrutinized and filtered out,
Speaker 4: and you know, they really don't have no any dignity
Speaker 4: in your self respect in my opinion.
Speaker 1: Wait, am I going to be buying jewelry from a
Speaker 1: robot in the near future? Are they going to be
Speaker 1: behind the counter?
Speaker 4: Well, the beautiful thing is, you know what I'm saying
Speaker 4: if jewelry, jewelry is the last or one of the
Speaker 4: last few businesses that you know, escapes the eye of Saurron,
Speaker 4: which would be like a Jeff Bezos right, all right,
Speaker 4: you know Amazon, you it started out with books. Now
Speaker 4: it's paper towels. Now you could host a server now
Speaker 4: anything you can imagine, movies, TV shows. He gobbled up
Speaker 4: everything but jewelry. I still have this little, uh little
Speaker 4: you know, territory that I could expand in and that's
Speaker 4: by the grace of God if nothing else. So luckily,
Speaker 4: jewelry is kind of those one of those few things
Speaker 4: that's not going to have a barcode on it.
Speaker 1: Just going back to hiring, how do you actually find
Speaker 1: and source your employees? Do you put out an ad
Speaker 1: or is it like through word of mouth through networking?
Speaker 4: I put out an ad, I asked to whatever you know,
Speaker 4: if anybody has somebody, or I put up a post
Speaker 4: on social media. But the best way to hire, I
Speaker 4: find is to tell somebody, hey, you're here for a
Speaker 4: one week trial, and if you do well, I'll extend
Speaker 4: that to a one month trial. And if you do
Speaker 4: well on that too much, I'm not hiring anybody. It's
Speaker 4: like getting married to somebody. At this point, I'm not
Speaker 4: marrying them until I trust them and really get to
Speaker 4: know them and see them under a different circumstances. So
Speaker 4: it's not like the corporate world. It's the diamond district,
Speaker 4: and I really scrutinize them, and I also ask the
Speaker 4: other opinions, say, how did this person do? Did this
Speaker 4: person say good And once you have a good panel
Speaker 4: of people, then you can really you know, rely on
Speaker 4: different opinions and build a good group. It's the biggest challenge,
Speaker 4: especially in the jewelry business. That's why people work with
Speaker 4: their family.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Is it front of shop that like, are you have
Speaker 2: the hardest time? I mean, is it the people sort
Speaker 2: of like working the counter talking about the jewelry showing
Speaker 2: it to them or is it people in the back?
Speaker 2: Is it people?
Speaker 4: What is everybody? Everybody who touches expensive materials is scary
Speaker 4: to me. You know, somebody's picking up a casting, someone's
Speaker 4: shopping for sapphires. Are they taking a bribe? Are they
Speaker 4: picking off some stones? Are they taking a couple of grams?
Speaker 4: Are they doing some other nonsense nefarious business, which I've
Speaker 4: seen it all. I've had employees just take stuff off
Speaker 4: the shelf and go to the scrapper and scrap it. Wow,
Speaker 4: you know, I've you know, I walked into my shop
Speaker 4: and I see someone's wearing a chain underneath their neck,
Speaker 4: a big one underneath their shirt. But I could see
Speaker 4: it through the shirt. I'm like, listen, what is that chain?
Speaker 4: And you know he fast talks to me He's like, no,
Speaker 4: I'm waiting for the client. He's gonna come right back.
Speaker 4: I'm just gonna give it to him.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I'm like, there's keeping it warm in
Speaker 1: the meantime.
Speaker 4: I'm like, there's no way this person is just looking
Speaker 4: me dead in the eyes and lying to me. I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 4: turns out he was just stealing it, ready to go
Speaker 4: home with it. I mean, listen, I've been through everything
Speaker 4: you can imagine. I've had people forward my signature on
Speaker 4: a check, you know, pick up double castings, all right.
Speaker 4: You go to you have to pick something up for
Speaker 4: a client, you pick up two, you get one to
Speaker 4: the client, one for yourself. I've had it all, and
Speaker 4: I've lost my faith in humanity because of it.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's a humanity will fade away, but
Speaker 2: that fourteen carred gold chain will be there for thousands
Speaker 2: of years. And this gets back to the gold is
Speaker 2: permanently right back where we started. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wait, So one of the most annoying things I find
Speaker 1: about shopping for jewelry, and I mean, I don't shop
Speaker 1: for jewelry that often, but when I do, it's like
Speaker 1: the pricing transparency. You look in the case, and half
Speaker 1: the time you can't read what's written on the label
Speaker 1: because they're often handwritten or they've stuck the label like
Speaker 1: under the ring and so you can't see it.
Speaker 4: That's the fun part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get that it's good for you, But what
Speaker 1: do you do? What do those prices actually A? How
Speaker 1: do those prices come about?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: What do they actually mean? I assume they're all negotiable.
Speaker 1: They usually are. And then B how often are you
Speaker 1: actually changing the labels? Like if the price of gold
Speaker 1: goes up twenty percent, yeah, twenty percent, do you do
Speaker 1: you have to like go and rewrite all the little
Speaker 1: price tag?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you might have to. That depends on what type
Speaker 4: of store or what type of operation you're running. Or
Speaker 4: sometimes you just do the math in your head. Or
Speaker 4: sometimes you say, hey, listen, price of gold went up,
Speaker 4: and next week I might change this tag by it now,
Speaker 4: you know? So it's it is what it is. I mean,
Speaker 4: the price is based on the raw materials plus labor,
Speaker 4: you know, plus design, plus the fee that I want
Speaker 4: to make. And like I said, it doesn't have a
Speaker 4: bar code on it. It's not like buying a digital
Speaker 4: camera right now, where it's four ninety five on Amazon
Speaker 4: and for eighty eight at Walmart. You know, and you
Speaker 4: just say, Okay, I don't want to save this or
Speaker 4: I don't want to do that, or whatever it might be.
Speaker 4: This is a it still has a little bit of
Speaker 4: more of a romance to it to make the purchase
Speaker 4: and learn the raw materials. And you know, if I
Speaker 4: was to tell somebody out there, if you're shopping for something,
Speaker 4: you're the client, and what should you do? Is the
Speaker 4: real question. Okay, what should Tracy do? All right, Tracy
Speaker 4: should walk into any jewelry store in the Diamond District,
Speaker 4: look at whatever she likes, say how many carrots, how
Speaker 4: many grams, what's the price, and then walk out the
Speaker 4: door and buy nothing. Okay, go to the next door,
Speaker 4: in the next door, in the next door, and then
Speaker 4: come back and say, I saw this over here, but
Speaker 4: can you do this for me over here eighteen fifty
Speaker 4: I come right back. If they give you a look
Speaker 4: or they do this, don't shop there. That's it. Don't
Speaker 4: let the pressure you to buy, and don't let them
Speaker 4: pressure you with a story and whatever it is, because
Speaker 4: that's kind of the venus fly trap that people use.
Speaker 4: They come in, they befriend you, and they use all
Speaker 4: of these crazy social tactics to you know, get you
Speaker 4: to get something to buy it. And if you really
Speaker 4: want to be sharp, you know, when I go to
Speaker 4: the diamond district and I have to buy sapphires right now,
Speaker 4: I have to buy a lot of sapphires for to
Speaker 4: manufacture chains. One person's telling me this quality for one
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty dollars a carrot. The other one's telling
Speaker 4: me this quality for one to twenty and other qualities
Speaker 4: sixty dollars a carat for something. Somebody might have had
Speaker 4: something in there safe for forty five and they're willing
Speaker 4: to let it go for twenty five. And you can
Speaker 4: manipulate that system if you shop around and turn the
Speaker 4: tables on them. So that's what your responsibility is.
Speaker 2: Actually, this raison is an question that I've sort of
Speaker 2: wondered about. People talk about this, what's the advantage for
Speaker 2: you of being in the district, because it sounds great
Speaker 2: for the customer. You walk down five different stories, especially
Speaker 2: if you're getting fairly generic like a ring or whatever.
Speaker 2: But you know, this is this phenomenon that happens in
Speaker 2: the economy of companies sort of agglomerating in one place.
Speaker 2: What is the reason for why does it advantage you
Speaker 2: to be in the diamond district versus somewhere else where
Speaker 2: there isn't a neighbor.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you right now. Well, you know, maybe after
Speaker 4: work today I'm gonna go. I'm gonna stop by a
Speaker 4: Korean casting manufacturer that he's got some new models in
Speaker 4: of stretchy bands that have springs in them that are
Speaker 4: you know, diamonds all around. And that's not something I
Speaker 4: could have created or invented. They're not reaching the end consumer.
Speaker 4: They're not setting their own diamonds. They're just selling casting.
Speaker 4: So they have that someone else might have a sapphire
Speaker 4: or emerald that I need, And there is someone else
Speaker 4: might be an incredible diamond setter. There's a casting company
Speaker 4: that is able to do big castings. If I want
Speaker 4: to cast a really big piece, Okay, someone's an expert
Speaker 4: in silver. I can't hire all these people. I can't
Speaker 4: put them all under one roof. And if you want
Speaker 4: to be you know, if yeah, if I want to,
Speaker 4: if I manufacture all my jewelry and I know exactly
Speaker 4: what I'm selling and I put it in a store,
Speaker 4: I'll go to Madison Avenue or whatever. I'll go downtown.
Speaker 4: But if I really want to be able to wheel
Speaker 4: and deal and be competitive, I want to work with
Speaker 4: all of my friends that I've been doing business with
Speaker 4: for twenty years in the Diamond District and use all
Speaker 4: of the resources and all the creative energy that's there.
Speaker 4: When it comes to the gems, the gold, the castings,
Speaker 4: the labor, the sizing, the engravings, the laser etchings, whatever
Speaker 4: it might be. It's a fun place to do business.
Speaker 1: Do you expect hire tariffs to impact you at all?
Speaker 4: No, not really, I don't really know. I mean, I
Speaker 4: hear so many stories about these tariffs. One person's this,
Speaker 4: one person's that. Listen. You know, my experience getting people
Speaker 4: to pay to play isn't the worst thing in the world.
Speaker 4: So you know, it might be more difficult on one end,
Speaker 4: and then someone's got more money on the other end,
Speaker 4: and then this happens, and then that happens, and there's
Speaker 4: a chain reaction to a variety of different effects. Try
Speaker 4: try it at this point. You know, I'm tired of
Speaker 4: looking at America declining ever since I got here in
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety three. Try something.
Speaker 2: If I opened the store I'm actually going back to
Speaker 2: the diamond Sometimes. Tracy and I joke around about opening up,
Speaker 2: you know, going into the businesses of the people we
Speaker 2: speak to. Can someone new just arrive in the diamond
Speaker 2: district or would they be looked at a skance like? How?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 2: How deep are the roots of everyone who's there?
Speaker 4: Pretty deep? I mean money talks. You could establish relationships
Speaker 4: with money pretty quickly. I established minds with no money.
Speaker 2: But yeah, how'd you get how'd you get your foothold there?
Speaker 4: Well? I started photographing jewelry and putting it up on
Speaker 4: eBay in two thousand and four when people laughed at
Speaker 4: jewelry on the internet. So this is when Amazon was
Speaker 4: pretty cheap to buy, and I think was selling books
Speaker 4: or something at that time. So I was able to
Speaker 4: start photographing jewelry and putting it up on the Internet.
Speaker 4: So I would photograph it, put it up, sell it,
Speaker 4: then buy it and ship it. And I was able
Speaker 4: to feed different vendors money until they would take me serious,
Speaker 4: and I learned the industry. But unless you have years
Speaker 4: and years of experience, you don't really want to sit
Speaker 4: here and go to the diamondustry and open up and
Speaker 4: do anything right? All right, this is, you know, not
Speaker 4: the type of thing that you just want. It's like
Speaker 4: me saying tomorrow, well, I want to open up you know,
Speaker 4: a dentistry something. You know what I'm saying, Like, I
Speaker 4: don't know anything about that industry. I don't know anything
Speaker 4: about carpets. I don't know anything about you know, manufacturing
Speaker 4: or of you know, computers. It's not my field. I
Speaker 4: dedicated myself to a field. So if anybody wants to
Speaker 4: dive into that field, your grand kid might do it,
Speaker 4: might do well, but you might have a hard time
Speaker 4: with it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's one other thing I wanted to ask you, which
Speaker 1: is who is actually buying and whether you've noticed any
Speaker 1: changes there because we hear stories. I mean obviously you
Speaker 1: hear stories about like China's Central bank buying lots of
Speaker 1: gold or maybe, but like, do you notice it in
Speaker 1: terms of actual Like do Chinese people come in and
Speaker 1: buy more gold lately?
Speaker 4: No, not here particularly, but they might be buying it
Speaker 4: from someone else. I really love to ask my gold vendor,
Speaker 4: kahan is his name or Isaac is his name? Kahana
Speaker 4: is the company, and you know his father and his
Speaker 4: uncle put that together, put a business together. They went
Speaker 4: separate ways, and he just inherited his father just retired
Speaker 4: when he was eighty. He has a safe full of
Speaker 4: gold and silver, and he has lots and lots of customers.
Speaker 4: Who they are, I'm not sure. They're a variety of
Speaker 4: different people, but personally, people reach out to me once
Speaker 4: in a while. A family member, you know, a mo
Speaker 4: might want to run into some cash, or they just
Speaker 4: sold their business and they want to spend a half
Speaker 4: a million bucks on gold or something like that, or
Speaker 4: a variety of different people. It's I haven't seen a pattern. Okay,
Speaker 4: I haven't seen a pattern, and I really haven't seen
Speaker 4: a rush of either. Right now. The game is crypto,
Speaker 4: so it's you know, that's what they're thinking about, and
Speaker 4: that's what it is. I'm not a big fan of
Speaker 4: it at all because I've held gold my whole life.
Speaker 4: I've passed it, i've gave it, i've hit it, i've
Speaker 4: sold it, I bought it, I melted it. I've never
Speaker 4: held a bitcoin. I've never seen one. I've heard of them,
Speaker 4: and I know they're out there somewhere, but I don't
Speaker 4: want to wake up in the morning and need my
Speaker 4: Wi Fi password to get my money.
Speaker 2: How secure is your safe passwords there? Just in your head?
Speaker 2: I guess you could always bust it open if you
Speaker 2: forget it.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, I mean it's the security is about the
Speaker 4: cameras that are pointing at it. And yeah, there is
Speaker 4: a combination plus a key. But listen, you know I
Speaker 4: don't take my trays in and out every day I am.
Speaker 4: I don't do any of that. To be honest, I
Speaker 4: have managers and managers that manage groups of people that
Speaker 4: I trust. Some people are trustworthy, believe it or not,
Speaker 4: in this world. Few And the example I give is
Speaker 4: like this, right, there's a lot of iron in the
Speaker 4: world and a lot of base metals and there's very little,
Speaker 4: but there is gold. Same thing with people. There's a
Speaker 4: lot of untrustworthy people. There's a lot of base base metals.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of base people, and then there's a
Speaker 4: few amazing people that are special, just like the golden
Speaker 4: medal is special and the universe creates them, just like
Speaker 4: the universe creates gold. You look at the periodic chart,
Speaker 4: you got to figure out where that came from. That's
Speaker 4: up to you to decide. Wait.
Speaker 2: Actually, one last question in uncut gems, and Adam Sandler
Speaker 2: gave the stone to Kevin Garnett to like hold for
Speaker 2: a while for good luck. Would jeweler ever do that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, anything can happen. I mean, you know, you might
Speaker 4: be doing a promotion and you might be putting diamonds
Speaker 4: on someone.
Speaker 2: And this stressed me out so much. The thought of like,
Speaker 2: I'm just going a movie.
Speaker 4: Yes, is me too? Living it for twenty years been
Speaker 4: stressful as well. So yeah, definitely give your gold and
Speaker 4: your jewelry and your watchers to different people, and you
Speaker 4: hope you find them at the end of the night,
Speaker 4: whether they're going to award shows. Yeah, sometimes you tell them, hey,
Speaker 4: you know one of the lines I use to prevent
Speaker 4: myself to be in that situation. My insurance company won't
Speaker 4: allow it. That's smart, So you know, you get this
Speaker 4: is the jewelry business. If you put yourself a word
Speaker 4: game that people are not prepared for, you're prepared for it.
Speaker 4: But they're not. My insurance company. If I'll avoid me
Speaker 4: if I give out my stuff.
Speaker 1: Have insurance premium has been going up?
Speaker 4: They must be right, Yes they have. If you don't
Speaker 4: make any claims, they kind of leave you alone. So
Speaker 4: you know, the insurance is like almost a break even game, right,
Speaker 4: you know, my insurance is expensive, and if you use it,
Speaker 4: it goes up, and if you don't use it, you're
Speaker 4: giving them the money and so on and so forth.
Speaker 4: But better to have it and not use it.
Speaker 1: Does it go up in tandem with like the price
Speaker 1: of gold though? No? Huh?
Speaker 2: Mark soud Aga, Johnny tracks n YC. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for coming on odline.
Speaker 4: Hey, thank you you guys were thank you for giving
Speaker 4: me this golden opportunity.
Speaker 2: Glad you have given you your start.
Speaker 1: We had to have at least one pun. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the conversation.
Speaker 2: That was fantastic. Thank you so much. That was a
Speaker 2: lot of fun.
Speaker 4: Glad.
Speaker 2: That was fun.
Speaker 1: Tracy, It's always fun talking gold jewelry with Max. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess the investment thesis has borne out
Speaker 1: so far.
Speaker 2: Old done, golds done great. But I know it was
Speaker 2: a kind of a joke, but I really do take
Speaker 2: this seriously that at any time, no matter what the
Speaker 2: price of gold is, one hundred dollars worth of gold
Speaker 2: is always one hundred dollars. And so if you know
Speaker 2: for real, because if you're thinking like I have x
Speaker 2: amount of dollar value that I want to store in
Speaker 2: some other non fiat forum.
Speaker 1: This is true, right, Well, I'll tell you what was
Speaker 1: interesting was the idea of like competition with the crypto.
Speaker 2: Yah. That was really interesting because.
Speaker 1: It did sound I mean, as he was saying, it
Speaker 1: does sound like people are kind of you know, it's
Speaker 1: sort of an either or.
Speaker 2: Yeah two, especially for like the people who want to
Speaker 2: like speculate on price. Right to the other things that
Speaker 2: I thought were really interesting from that conversation. One is
Speaker 2: his description of what specifically lab grown diamonds did to
Speaker 2: the diamond industry, about sort of chopping out the low
Speaker 2: end of the diamond market. Yeah, because it's, yeah, it
Speaker 2: makes sense, why buy a cheap diamond or a low
Speaker 2: grade diamond when you could get a high grown lab Like,
Speaker 2: once you've already established that you're going to get something cheap,
Speaker 2: why not get the lab grown version? And then the
Speaker 2: way that that filters through to the price overall. And
Speaker 2: I was just really interested in like his comments on
Speaker 2: hiring and how difficult that is, Like I said, I
Speaker 2: had heard the my barber said the same thing, Like
Speaker 2: just this core aspect of like hiring people who are
Speaker 2: sort of like with it, not seeking to get high
Speaker 2: per se. Interesting interesting comments there.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry speaking of being a bad worker. I'm very
Speaker 1: distracted by I looked up the diamond encrusted Ferbie.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so how much is that going for?
Speaker 1: Well, so it got auctioned off by A twenty four
Speaker 1: the production company, and I'm trying to find how much
Speaker 1: it went for, but I can't find it at the moment.
Speaker 1: But I'm just staring at all these like animated videos. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the diamond.
Speaker 2: For I have watched that movie again, do you want to?
Speaker 1: I found it so stressful the first time. I don't
Speaker 1: think I could.
Speaker 2: It was really stressful. But you know, I know how
Speaker 2: it ends now, so maybe maybe that'll make it a
Speaker 2: little bit. Maybe that'll make it easier.
Speaker 1: There's some people are making imitation gold ferbies. I gotta
Speaker 1: got one of those.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just get one of those.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: Shall we leave it there before I just start like
Speaker 1: narrating my online shopping.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's leave it there.
Speaker 1: Okay. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracey.
Speaker 2: Away, and I'm joll Wisenthal. You can follow me at
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