February 14, 2025 • 47 mins
The price of gold is basically at record highs. But what is it about gold that people love so much? Why have people always craved a metal that has no real industrial uses? And what does owning or wearing gold represent? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Maksud Agadjani, the founder of TraxNYC, a jewelry store based in NYC's Diamond District. You may recognize Maksud from the movie Uncut Gems, where he played a character similar to himself, working in the fast-moving world of precious metals, rare stones, and flashy jewelry. We talked to him about the persistent demand for gold and why people are so into it right now.
Read more: Gold’s Price Surge Drives Narcos Into Illegal Mining in the Amazon
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, they're aud Loots listeners. It's Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
And Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
We are very excited to announce that Oudlots is going
to Washington That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
For the first time, we are going to do a
live public Odd Lots recording in our nation's capital. That's
going to be March twelfth in Washington, DC at the
Miracle Theater and guests will be announced in the coming days,
but in the meantime you can find a ticket link
at Bloomberg dot com, slash odd.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Lots, Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Tracy. Gold has had a really good year.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Here's a question. Here's a question.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
One of the last times we talked about gold, you
made fun of me for being a gold bug. Are
you going to start this episode out by doing the
same thing.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
No, you're completely vindicated. Gold has done really well over
the long term. Over the last several years, it's been
one of the best performing assets. It's stable. I take
back everything I ever implied negatively about gold.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
You're gonna be nice to the gold now, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Out, but it's look at the chart's great.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I will say I'm sort of an accidental gold bug.
It has not been a conscious choice to accumulate, but
it has turned out really well. So gold keeps hitting
record after record. As we're recording this, I think it's
at two thousand and six hundred announced.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, twenty six forty nine. It had gotten as high
as twenty eight hundred almost in October. But it's been
I mean, it's the last couple of years have been phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
That's crazy. And the other really interesting thing is like
it started going up even as the Federal Reserve was
raising rates, which is something that you don't normally see,
like normally has that inverse relationship to rates, that negative correlation. Yeah,
and I guess the demand has just been so strong
that it doesn't really matter this time around.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Can I say something? So you bring up the sort
of FED connection, et cetera. And so I want to
learn more about gold, but I don't really have much
interest in just talking to like another gold macro guy,
because I don't know what they say. They always sell
the same story. It's like inflation and currency debasement and
all that. Maybe that's all true, but I sort of like,
(02:32):
I want to talk gold, but it's just like I
sort of felt going into this conversation that we can't
just talk to someone who's just, you know, going to
tell the same story they could have told about gold
every single day for the last twenty years.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I think it's a very valid feeling to have. There
is something like physical about gold. Obviously, it's shiny, it's
fun to hold. Even like silver, you can have fun
stacking those coins, as I know personally, So it makes
sense to talk to someone who's in the physical market.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
We're gonna talk about what's going on in the gold market,
but actually get into why people love gold so much,
and why people want to be covered and why right now,
why right now, why people want to accumulate gold, have
it in their saves, have it on their person, et cetera.
We really do have the perfect guest. We're going to
be speaking with Max sud Aga, Johnny Max Aga. Johnny.
(03:19):
He is the founder of Tracks NYC, New York City
based jewelry dealer, and listeners might not We actually had
him on the podcast once in early twenty twenty, and
listeners might know him if they ever saw the movie
Uncut Gems, one of my favorite movies of the last
few years, because he actually was in the movie. He
played I guess kind of himself to some extent in
(03:42):
the movie. I think the character's name was Yussie in
the Diamond District, in the gold District in Manhattan. And
we're going to talk all these gold with Max masud
Aka Yussi. Thank you so much for coming back on
oud laws.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Thank you for having me for a second time.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
What's your life been like the last four years? How
did that all change your life?
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Am I the od It's only been up from there
A little movie that you appeared in. The movie did good,
My odd lots did good, other podcasts did good, and
all the social media also it did really good for me.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Here's an important question. Did you bring me the diamond
encrusted Ferbie?
Speaker 4 (04:22):
In all reality? It wasn't even diamonds in that thing.
It was movie magic.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Honestly, I would take the brass version too.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
But it might not be good for your skin.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
But oh really, what does breast do your skin?
Speaker 1 (04:34):
It turns it green?
Speaker 4 (04:35):
She got it, she knows it.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
All all women know this. The big difference between gold
and brass.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
So other than the fact that gold doesn't turn your
skin green, people, what is it that people love about gold?
Why do people why do people buy gold from you?
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Well, gold is for people who have money to burn, right,
you know, if you're you could go back thousands of years,
if you're an Egyptian pharaoh and you're not starving, you
have any of labor and grain and land and property.
What don't you have? Well, I guess I want to
make a gold casket, a gold esophagus, so to speak,
(05:10):
and maybe some peasants might find some in the field
and I'll give him the grain he needs, and he'll
give me the gold. So it accumulates with people who
are not struggling, and that turns it into a status symbol.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
You know, Joe, I remember you actually wrote a really
good piece about the history of gold and how it
was sort of intermingled with power and this idea that
you know, like you needed a big military basically to
go out and get gold, and you needed a lot
of labor to dig it up, and so it became
very much associated with power.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
It's like a proof of work, right, Yeah, you can,
like even in the bitcoin sense. Also, you know, one thing, Tracy.
You know, Max mentioned the Pharaohs. Gold doesn't tarnish, right,
So it's like the historically, going back thousands of years,
it was associated with the God, just like one commodity
that is truly immortal in a way that most things
that we find on earth are.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Okay, I have a really dumb question, though. When gold
is hitting records like it is right now, do you
see more or less demand for jewelry?
Speaker 4 (06:10):
I mean, it's kind of stable, to be honest. You know,
when I started my business in two thousand and four,
gold was about three hundred dollars in ounce. Now it's
twenty five hundred and twenty six hundred, fluctuating over there.
I've watched it the whole way. It's increase in price
does have a little bit of effect on a demand,
but not that much. But you know, at some point
people can't afford what they want. Back in two thousand
(06:33):
and four, you could stack yourself with gold fourteen carrot
at twelve dollars a gram or whatever it was. It
was a great time to really stack gold. But now
your dollar doesn't go so far and you can't really
have as much as you'd like.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
But on the other hand, in two thousand and four,
if you bought one hundred dollars worth of gold, you
had one hundred dollars worth of gold. In twenty twenty five,
if you buy one hundred dollars worth of gold, you
still have one hundred dollars. So in a way, no
o like for real, like if you want to like
convert your dollars into something else, it does the same
job at twenty six forty nine as it does a three.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Yeah. Well listen until the guy that bought it at
two thousand and four walks through the door and his
hundred dollars worth of gold looks like a bigger pile
than your one hundred dollars worth of gold. But whatever,
you know, money's a game. Gold is one way to
play it. It's a safe way to play it. I
love it because I have a jewelry store full of
goal chains and gold jewelry, and as the price goes up,
(07:28):
what I can't sell, I melt and I still make
my money back, and that's a fantastic aspect of it.
And it never let me down, and I don't think
it ever let anybody in history down. So you can't
really go wrong with it. You might not be the
biggest winner like you are with the cryptos or whatever.
It is. Somebody who bought you know, a pizza pie
(07:49):
for fifteen or twenty bitcoin back in twenty eleven and
now could have been a billionaire or whatever. Yeah, it
might not do that, but it'll keep you safe and
sound and happy.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Do you feel competition with the crypt I mean.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
I don't want gold to go up. You know that
doesn't do anything for me. I know it will eventually,
but yeah, crypto had a major impact. Who knows if
crypto would never Satoshi Nakamoto never bothered to do whatever
he was doing or whatever that was. What would the
gold be right now if it wasn't trillions of dollars
(08:22):
literally inside of crazy cryptos?
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, it could be up more. What what are people
into these days?
Speaker 4 (08:29):
What are people into these days?
Speaker 2 (08:31):
So when they come into your store, what are they like?
How much is it like the crazy diamond and crusted
ferbies that Tracy didn't get today versus just wanting a
nice tasteful chain versus So what's what's that?
Speaker 4 (08:42):
I mean, listen, everybody everybody has their own little need,
you know, they want they want to give a gift
for a girl. So they might want to be able
to buy a tennis bracelet. Okay, they have a girlfriend,
or they have a side chick, or they have a
baby mama. I don't know what their situation is, but
you gotta buy or something, all right, So you gotta
go and you gotta buy it. Could be a tennis
(09:03):
bracelet that will be with done.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Call they tell you if it's for the side chick,
will they say that, by the way, this is for
the side Uh?
Speaker 4 (09:09):
I could usually tell what's going on.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Is the bracelet for the side chicks the one for
the wife?
Speaker 4 (09:16):
You know that varies from customer to customer. Put it
that way, okay.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Can I ask the basic question though? Why why do
you think gold prices happen going up?
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Well, listen, I mean, you know, we gotta do the math,
all right. It's one thing I learned since the last
time I was here to today. A lot of people,
maybe they might be in a beautiful building like we
are now, are in a professional field, but not doing
the mathematics here at all. All right, thirty six trillion
dollars and that one trillion dollars in interest you got
China buying it up like crazy. So I hear Central
(09:49):
Banks this that if you look into numbers, you're going
to find out what's really going on. And it's like
the Wizard of Oz out there. You really don't want
to look behind the curtain here because I don't know
what you're gonna find there and how this is all
going to come to a head as things that get turbulent,
you know, when in the new administration or what have you,
(10:11):
whatever you want to call it, and cryptos and quantum
computing and robots and this and that. I don't really
know how it's all going to play out, but I
know that if anything happens, I have my safe, my
combination to my safe, my security system, and my physical
assets that I can rely on. So that's what it
is for me. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
I feel like there is a tension there though, because
like if I imagine myself coming into a jewelry store and
I'm like, okay, I'm gonna buy a gold chain because
you know, it's a safe store of value and things
are uncertain right now, Like that's okay, But on the
other hand, I'm buying like something that's pretty frivolous, right.
It's like a it's a gold chain. What am I
really going to do with as it should be?
Speaker 4 (10:53):
Frivolous? I mean, you're not supposed to be on the
edge of starvation, you know, struggling against all odds. I
need choose and a winter coat and coal for my.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Furnace, you know, prioritize the gold.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Yeah, we're supposed to be productive, successful people in a
modern world with surplus. Right.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Wait, but when people come into your store, do they
talk to you about why they're buying gold? Do they
say stuff like I'm worried about inflation?
Speaker 4 (11:19):
Yeah, some people do. I mean there's somebody that came in.
I'll never forget him. He was listening to what I
was saying and he came in. This is when gold
was eighteen fifty and he was painting houses and he
bought like ten ounces. So he saved up the money
eighteen five hundred dollars or whatever it was, and he
(11:39):
saved up the money and he said, you know what,
I'm tired of losing my money. I'm tired of spending.
He bought ten ounces of gold because of what I said.
And you know wherever he is now if he held
out to that gold, now it's you know, twenty six thousand,
five hundred or whatever. So he did great, and he
just bought ten ten ounces of you know, one ounce
each of Bouyon bars. But I feel like he even
(12:02):
got short changed. I think the gold price after that
ridiculous pandemic with all that printing, should be way higher
and then even twenty six fifty. But I'm not looking
for that to happen anytime soon.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
One thing that I always liked on your Instagram page,
and I'm not sure if you've done one recently. Used
to do like these really fun like sort of like
let's take a look at geopolitics and like the charts
and the maps. Have you still been doing that?
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Yeah, I mean that's not like the I found that
to be very entertaining. Well you guys, you guys, there's
you know, a little smart and stuff like that. But
for the average person in the crowd, sometimes I have
to do something a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
I remember, like years and I don't know what year
it was when you had like the chart of Iran
and the chart, you know, and it's differently tensions in
the Middle East.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
I do that on tracks news. Yeah, yeah, I have
a little side channel where I talk about what's really
going on in the world. But when it comes to
my main pages, I want to I have to make money. Yeah, okay,
So I have to go and I have to stick
around the materials, the diamonds, the sapphires, the gold, and
I have to market my jewelry to the masses in
(13:21):
a clever way. Make my money. Buy more gold chains.
I'm placing in order for half a million for seven
kilos okay of gold chains. I'm gonna flood out my
shop and I'm gonna hunker down and I'm gonna wait
for it all to end.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
What are your security costs right now?
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Well, listen, I mean I'm in the middle of the
Diamond district. You know, my rent is about fifty thousand
dollars a month. But that has three spaces up you know,
in fourteen A, which is on the thirteenth floor, and
then I have a mezzanine, and then I have a storefront.
And luckily there's you know, police cars there and two
precincts nearby. I'm next to Fox News and Rockefeller Center,
(14:01):
so I'm in a safe place. If if there's ever
was a place to stash gold, this is the place
to do it. So I'm gonna take advantage of that fact.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
What what would you leave for the day? Like how
big is that protocol of like locking up everything?
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Right? Well, my staff does it. I have cameras. I
see what's going on, and I have It's like a
casino or a bank. If you make a proper protocol,
you don't have to sit here and worry about it
so much.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
When you talk about buying half a million, seven kilos
worth of gold making a half a million dollar order,
what's that? What's that?
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Like?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Who are the big players in the sort of wholesale
gold district?
Speaker 4 (14:38):
And for anybody doing the math that's in fourteen characters,
they're going to seven kilos, they're going to be think
and this guy's some not on the up and up.
That's coming from different chain manufacturers in Italy sometimes could
be Indonesia or somewhere else, and they have factories and
they source their gold however which way they do it.
You know, I've been to some of these factories. They're
(14:59):
beautiful factories, family run. But I like to buy my
gold in gold chains. Now if I buy gold bars
or grain, and I do that often as well. I
do that right on the street on forty seventh Street
with several different vendors there that are really really cool
people worth the visiting and learning about.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
What do higher gold prices actually do for your profit
margins because I imagine, like the actual manufacturing cost is
probably the biggest chunk.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Yeah, they know that's not the manufacturing cost is not
the biggest chunk. I mean, the gold, the material is
the biggest by far, and it eats away and then
you have to raise your prices. But jewelry is the
only industry in which you raise your prices and sales
could go up because people associate that with a higher quality, right,
you know, they'll look if people don't know anything about it,
(15:49):
they'll say, hey, this sapphire is thirty thousand, this one's
twenty thousand, so that sapphire must be better than this one,
you know. And that's how people think about jewelry, and
that's the psychology behind it. And you know that works
in our favor if we're building a jewelry brand or whatever.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
So, by the way, we're recording this on January seventh.
Just today, Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta CEO, the Facebook Guy,
released a video and about content moderation and a number
of people noticed he was wearing a nine hundred thousand
dollars watch. His style has changed. Yep, what do you
is there been? Have you noticed a shift in general
sort of public styles of people these days maybe versus
(16:29):
say ten years ago, of wanting to wear their wealth
on their wrist, around their neck more.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Yeah. Yeah, the people are growing up. Think things are
definitely changing and people are flashing a little bit more.
I mean, you know, there was the era of Steve
Jobs where he was the real leader and he was,
you know, the same pair of jeans and sneakers, New
Balance sneakers, very plain, and you know, once he passed,
(16:54):
other people are stepping out and the watch game is
I guess something that caught marks and he's in it
now and he's playing along, which is great for business.
And you know, that's really what's been going on. And
I think that's a great trend. A lot of people
wearing different time pieces. There's way more information about them now.
The market has kind of been democratized a little bit
(17:17):
where people could look up different watches and find their
certain styling. And this guy is stepping out, he's stepping
up and he's changing his personality. Maybe he did ayahuasca.
I don't really know what got into him, but it's
good for business, so I'm happy about it.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
He definitely had a little makeover recently. You can tell
we've been talking a lot about gold, but we should
talk about diamonds as well, because like gold's been going up,
diamond prices have been going down for a while. And
I imagine some of it is, you know, the pressure
from lab grown diamonds, but like what's going.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
On there, Well, the lab grown is in the market
and it's weighing it down heavily because you can't tell
the difference. And even I've buy them sometimes and you
know the real challenges it used to be able to sell.
You know, S I, two, I one J color as well.
(18:10):
These are all the gradings of the stone.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Keep so you didn't you buy an engagement ring and
forgot it.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
It was a family early so I never had to
go to the lucky then in those days.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
So the lower you know, lower grade stones, they used
to play a part. But now why would I buy
a lower grade stone? Right? It's here's a decent example.
Why would I buy a Honda Accord built from a
factory when I could buy a lab grown Mercedes.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Okay, you know, so it's.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Really it kills the low end. Yeah, if you're going
to go to the low end anyway, you don't really.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
But once you take out the low end, the high
end is coming with it and all sorts of things
are going down. But natural is still natural. Natural gems
are a different story.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
So the natural gyms are for the wife.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
Yeah, they're for their wives, and there for a way
for you to spend money.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
But wait, my engagement ring is actually an aquamarine. It's
not a diamond. But this reminds me, like, do you
see other types of stones coming into fashion, like the
more natural gemstones if maybe, like the lab grown diamonds
are kind of muddy in that market.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
Not yet nobody really knows what to do, okay, So
the engagement marriage these are you know, the highest societal
matters that one can discuss, and society doesn't know how
to decide that. There has to be some leadership. Someone
has to get engaged with the sapphire to start a trend,
some major celebrity or you know, God forbid. Malania gets
(19:46):
a divorce and gets a new husband. He buys her
a ruby. I think we'll see it.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Well Kate Middleton satire. Yeah that was a big deal.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Yeah, that's a big deal. And that's the way they
do it over there, because that was kind of Princess
Diana had, I think a safire. So I think that
was the trend, but it never really caught on into
the masses. Just yet, it's still diamonds.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Wait, why do things like fall in and out of
fashion like that? Like why why did diamonds have such
a hold on the engagement market.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
Still, that's a fantastic question. I mean this was you know,
propagandized by de beers at some point of time, somebody's
brainchild to be able to show commitment. And it also
the shoe fit, so they wore it. You know, she
got a one character, she's got a one and a half. Well,
(20:36):
my husband bought me a three character, but yours a Jkuller.
And it's just it's just a game for people to
play and for a way to have the guy spend money.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
One more diamond question, but like, how come diamonds? My
impression is notoriously if you get a giant diamond engagement ring,
like yes, okay, that's great, but if you break up
or you divorce and you want to go sell it,
it immediately loses a ton of value. Why is it
that diamonds never really like transformed into a store of
(21:07):
value in the same way that gold.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
It's a luxury product. Okay, listen, another example that I
give most of my clients, right, you could buy you
could go to the liquor store. You have a sixty dollars,
you could buy a bottle of champagne, or you could
buy a bottle of Jamaican rum. Okay, So one is
going to get you way more drunk for way longer
than the other. You know, Champagne, half the bottle is
(21:32):
gonna fly out when you open it, half the content
to the bottle. But Jamaican run rum, you could sit
under a bridge for a month and you know whatever.
So the fact of the matter is is one is
a luxury product for celebration and one is not. Okay,
if you really want, you know, if you're somewhere in
the Middle East or in Asia and you're getting married,
(21:54):
you're gonna cover your wife in gold so she could
feel secure about her you know, marriage or divorce or
commitment or whatever. But here in the West, you know,
at the top one percent of society or civilization or
whatever it might be. It's a different trend, and you're
buying something that is frivolous and luxurious. If you really
(22:16):
want something that's going to keep your value, give your
wife a gold bar or you know, you're not going
to see in some you know, on Park Avenue at
some a major wedding hall or whatever, a wife covered
in gold coins. Okay, all right, you know like you would.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Maybe one day maybe one.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Day, yeah, after you know, after the economy really I'm
gonna takes a noose dives then yeah. Maybe. So that's
the reason.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Let's talk about watches a little more. You sell watchers.
I'm looking at a ninety two thousand, fully iced out
sky Dweller Oyster Perpetual roll X watch on your website.
What's a cool watch brand these days? I mean Rolllexes
are always what are people into?
Speaker 4 (22:56):
Now?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
What's the hot thing in all?
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Well, the big boys obviously protect Philippe, Automar and Rolex,
and then if you really want to stand out, you
might get a brigade or you know, Cartiers or Cartier
as they like to pronounce it is something that's also cute.
But aside from that, Listen, you're getting a watch not
(23:18):
to tell the time. Let's just keep it real, okay,
You're getting a watch to have a status symbol. So
they call rolexes the new money. When you get your
first real money, you get yourself a rolex because you
know it's going to do the job. You've arrived, yes,
and then from there you go out further and further
into something that might be a little bit you know,
(23:42):
I'm unknown, but amongst the community of people in the watches,
it's respected. And there's definitely several different brands like that,
and none of them come to mind at the moment.
But you know, I usually rely on my friend Roman
Scharf when it comes to watches. He's an expert in
that field.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I used to know a big luxury watch collector in Appudapi.
Maybe that's unsurprising, and I never really understood the thesis
of like speculating on watches, but he was big into that.
He would buy and then he would trade and sell.
Is that an investment thesis that you buy into or
not so much?
Speaker 4 (24:21):
You know, Like at my store, I feel happiest when
I have a million in watches and a million in
gold or something like that. Okay, so you can't ever
go wrong with those assets. And they do Roles just
raise their list prices. So the prices went up on
all the watches, and anybody who has a Rolex gained,
(24:42):
and anybody who didn't is going to have to be,
you know, get their dollars up even higher to get one.
So you can't go wrong with some of those assets.
And you go look, you know, you'll see some run
into a YouTube video or something like that. Somebody who
bought a Rolex straight out of the army in nineteen
fifty eight or nineteen sixty three, and they bought it
(25:04):
and they kept a box and papers, and they bought
it for six hundred and fifty dollars, and today it's
worth a quarter of a million or one hundred and
fifty thousand or sixty nice. Yeah, I mean, you know
a lot of the things if you go and buy
them today, and you know you're a young person, if
you're a young person listening to this or's you know,
a few might be. And you go and you buy
(25:25):
Rolex and you don't take the stickers off, and you
buy a limited edition and you keep it there and
then you're sixty five years old. I know it seems
like a long long time from now, but that day
is gonna come. And if you pull that Rolex out
of that closet or out of that safe, you're gonna
really be happy with what's going on. And that's that's
the nature watches, because these companies and these brands do
(25:47):
something special for you know, their time pieces, and it's
and it works.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
I want to ask you a sort of real meat
and potatoes business question, but going back to safety and
security and uppers and like you probably have to like
hiring can't be people for your store, can't be like
totally trivial because you have to be able to trust them, etc.
That must be a huge part of it. You've jailed
it what you've seen. I was talking to my barber
(26:15):
recently and he was saying he had a hard time
hiring these days, and I said, well, what's the hard
part is that? Like, is it hard to find people
who can cut here? And he said, no, I'm actually
just that's basically what he said. He said, the hard
part is basically like just finding people who are sort
of normal and put together. And I'm curious, like from
your perspective, like what you've seen on that front.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Yeah, you know, New York City is a run down
in a lot of different ways. So there's a lot
of people that I mean, you got to sort through
a lot of people to find a good quality human being. Yeah, okay.
A lot of them are usually going to be immigrants
that are coming here from all over the world that
(26:55):
are really looking to work and have a real work
ethic that they're expected to work. People that grow up
in this society want to get high. Work is something
that for them to just an obstacle for them to
overcome for them to enjoy themselves and binge on Netflix?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Have you seen the desire to get high? And I
mean here in the literal sense of drug use? Has
that changed a lot into twenty years that you've had
tracks and having to deal with it?
Speaker 4 (27:22):
Well, listen, you know I smoke periodically and so on
and so forth, but I actually I have to make
sure that I fulfill my obligations to my business. All right.
Alcohol is a drug that people partake in after work
or so on and so forth. But people have become abusive,
and you know, it's not just the drugs, it's the
theft and the overall lack of work ethic in today's society.
(27:46):
They just don't understand it. And you know, people are
doing the bare minimum where they're pretending to work or
so on and so forth, and the moment you check
on their work, that's a serious problem. Luckily, the AI
and the robots are coming, so they could finally go
to Central Park and play, you know, frisbee or whatever
they really want to do. But it's it's quite tragic,
(28:08):
and those people need to be scrutinized and filtered out,
and you know, they really don't have no any dignity
in your self respect in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Wait, am I going to be buying jewelry from a
robot in the near future? Are they going to be
behind the counter?
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Well, the beautiful thing is, you know what I'm saying
if jewelry, jewelry is the last or one of the
last few businesses that you know, escapes the eye of Saurron,
which would be like a Jeff Bezos right, all right,
you know Amazon, you it started out with books. Now
it's paper towels. Now you could host a server now
(28:42):
anything you can imagine, movies, TV shows. He gobbled up
everything but jewelry. I still have this little, uh little
you know, territory that I could expand in and that's
by the grace of God if nothing else. So luckily,
jewelry is kind of those one of those few things
that's not going to have a barcode on it.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Just going back to hiring, how do you actually find
and source your employees? Do you put out an ad
or is it like through word of mouth through networking?
Speaker 4 (29:27):
I put out an ad, I asked to whatever you know,
if anybody has somebody, or I put up a post
on social media. But the best way to hire, I
find is to tell somebody, hey, you're here for a
one week trial, and if you do well, I'll extend
that to a one month trial. And if you do
well on that too much, I'm not hiring anybody. It's
(29:48):
like getting married to somebody. At this point, I'm not
marrying them until I trust them and really get to
know them and see them under a different circumstances. So
it's not like the corporate world. It's the diamond district,
and I really scrutinize them, and I also ask the
other opinions, say, how did this person do? Did this
person say good And once you have a good panel
(30:10):
of people, then you can really you know, rely on
different opinions and build a good group. It's the biggest challenge,
especially in the jewelry business. That's why people work with
their family.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Is it front of shop that like, are you have
the hardest time? I mean, is it the people sort
of like working the counter talking about the jewelry showing
it to them or is it people in the back?
Is it people?
Speaker 4 (30:32):
What is everybody? Everybody who touches expensive materials is scary
to me. You know, somebody's picking up a casting, someone's
shopping for sapphires. Are they taking a bribe? Are they
picking off some stones? Are they taking a couple of grams?
Are they doing some other nonsense nefarious business, which I've
seen it all. I've had employees just take stuff off
(30:54):
the shelf and go to the scrapper and scrap it. Wow,
you know, I've you know, I walked into my shop
and I see someone's wearing a chain underneath their neck,
a big one underneath their shirt. But I could see
it through the shirt. I'm like, listen, what is that chain?
And you know he fast talks to me He's like, no,
I'm waiting for the client. He's gonna come right back.
I'm just gonna give it to him.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
And I'm like, I'm like, there's keeping it warm in
the meantime.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
I'm like, there's no way this person is just looking
me dead in the eyes and lying to me. I'm like, Okay,
turns out he was just stealing it, ready to go
home with it. I mean, listen, I've been through everything
you can imagine. I've had people forward my signature on
a check, you know, pick up double castings, all right.
You go to you have to pick something up for
a client, you pick up two, you get one to
(31:40):
the client, one for yourself. I've had it all, and
I've lost my faith in humanity because of it.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
So you know, it's a humanity will fade away, but
that fourteen carred gold chain will be there for thousands
of years. And this gets back to the gold is
permanently right back where we started. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Wait, So one of the most annoying things I find
about shopping for jewelry, and I mean, I don't shop
for jewelry that often, but when I do, it's like
the pricing transparency. You look in the case, and half
the time you can't read what's written on the label
because they're often handwritten or they've stuck the label like
under the ring and so you can't see it.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
That's the fun part.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah, I get that it's good for you, But what
do you do? What do those prices actually A? How
do those prices come about?
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Like?
Speaker 1 (32:29):
What do they actually mean? I assume they're all negotiable.
They usually are. And then B how often are you
actually changing the labels? Like if the price of gold
goes up twenty percent, yeah, twenty percent, do you do
you have to like go and rewrite all the little
price tag?
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Yeah, you might have to. That depends on what type
of store or what type of operation you're running. Or
sometimes you just do the math in your head. Or
sometimes you say, hey, listen, price of gold went up,
and next week I might change this tag by it now,
you know? So it's it is what it is. I mean,
the price is based on the raw materials plus labor,
you know, plus design, plus the fee that I want
(33:04):
to make. And like I said, it doesn't have a
bar code on it. It's not like buying a digital
camera right now, where it's four ninety five on Amazon
and for eighty eight at Walmart. You know, and you
just say, Okay, I don't want to save this or
I don't want to do that, or whatever it might be.
This is a it still has a little bit of
more of a romance to it to make the purchase
(33:27):
and learn the raw materials. And you know, if I
was to tell somebody out there, if you're shopping for something,
you're the client, and what should you do? Is the
real question. Okay, what should Tracy do? All right, Tracy
should walk into any jewelry store in the Diamond District,
look at whatever she likes, say how many carrots, how
many grams, what's the price, and then walk out the
door and buy nothing. Okay, go to the next door,
(33:50):
in the next door, in the next door, and then
come back and say, I saw this over here, but
can you do this for me over here eighteen fifty
I come right back. If they give you a look
or they do this, don't shop there. That's it. Don't
let the pressure you to buy, and don't let them
pressure you with a story and whatever it is, because
that's kind of the venus fly trap that people use.
They come in, they befriend you, and they use all
(34:11):
of these crazy social tactics to you know, get you
to get something to buy it. And if you really
want to be sharp, you know, when I go to
the diamond district and I have to buy sapphires right now,
I have to buy a lot of sapphires for to
manufacture chains. One person's telling me this quality for one
hundred and fifty dollars a carrot. The other one's telling
(34:32):
me this quality for one to twenty and other qualities
sixty dollars a carat for something. Somebody might have had
something in there safe for forty five and they're willing
to let it go for twenty five. And you can
manipulate that system if you shop around and turn the
tables on them. So that's what your responsibility is.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Actually, this raison is an question that I've sort of
wondered about. People talk about this, what's the advantage for
you of being in the district, because it sounds great
for the customer. You walk down five different stories, especially
if you're getting fairly generic like a ring or whatever.
But you know, this is this phenomenon that happens in
the economy of companies sort of agglomerating in one place.
(35:08):
What is the reason for why does it advantage you
to be in the diamond district versus somewhere else where
there isn't a neighbor.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
I'll tell you right now. Well, you know, maybe after
work today I'm gonna go. I'm gonna stop by a
Korean casting manufacturer that he's got some new models in
of stretchy bands that have springs in them that are
you know, diamonds all around. And that's not something I
could have created or invented. They're not reaching the end consumer.
They're not setting their own diamonds. They're just selling casting.
(35:36):
So they have that someone else might have a sapphire
or emerald that I need, And there is someone else
might be an incredible diamond setter. There's a casting company
that is able to do big castings. If I want
to cast a really big piece, Okay, someone's an expert
in silver. I can't hire all these people. I can't
put them all under one roof. And if you want
(35:57):
to be you know, if yeah, if I want to,
if I manufacture all my jewelry and I know exactly
what I'm selling and I put it in a store,
I'll go to Madison Avenue or whatever. I'll go downtown.
But if I really want to be able to wheel
and deal and be competitive, I want to work with
all of my friends that I've been doing business with
for twenty years in the Diamond District and use all
(36:20):
of the resources and all the creative energy that's there.
When it comes to the gems, the gold, the castings,
the labor, the sizing, the engravings, the laser etchings, whatever
it might be. It's a fun place to do business.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Do you expect hire tariffs to impact you at all?
Speaker 4 (36:41):
No, not really, I don't really know. I mean, I
hear so many stories about these tariffs. One person's this,
one person's that. Listen. You know, my experience getting people
to pay to play isn't the worst thing in the world.
So you know, it might be more difficult on one end,
and then someone's got more money on the other end,
and then this happens, and then that happens, and there's
(37:02):
a chain reaction to a variety of different effects. Try
try it at this point. You know, I'm tired of
looking at America declining ever since I got here in
nineteen ninety three. Try something.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
If I opened the store I'm actually going back to
the diamond Sometimes. Tracy and I joke around about opening up,
you know, going into the businesses of the people we
speak to. Can someone new just arrive in the diamond
district or would they be looked at a skance like? How?
Speaker 4 (37:25):
Like?
Speaker 2 (37:26):
How deep are the roots of everyone who's there?
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Pretty deep? I mean money talks. You could establish relationships
with money pretty quickly. I established minds with no money.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
But yeah, how'd you get how'd you get your foothold there?
Speaker 4 (37:37):
Well? I started photographing jewelry and putting it up on
eBay in two thousand and four when people laughed at
jewelry on the internet. So this is when Amazon was
pretty cheap to buy, and I think was selling books
or something at that time. So I was able to
start photographing jewelry and putting it up on the Internet.
So I would photograph it, put it up, sell it,
(37:58):
then buy it and ship it. And I was able
to feed different vendors money until they would take me serious,
and I learned the industry. But unless you have years
and years of experience, you don't really want to sit
here and go to the diamondustry and open up and
do anything right? All right, this is, you know, not
(38:18):
the type of thing that you just want. It's like
me saying tomorrow, well, I want to open up you know,
a dentistry something. You know what I'm saying, Like, I
don't know anything about that industry. I don't know anything
about carpets. I don't know anything about you know, manufacturing
or of you know, computers. It's not my field. I
dedicated myself to a field. So if anybody wants to
(38:40):
dive into that field, your grand kid might do it,
might do well, but you might have a hard time
with it. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
There's one other thing I wanted to ask you, which
is who is actually buying and whether you've noticed any
changes there because we hear stories. I mean obviously you
hear stories about like China's Central bank buying lots of
gold or maybe, but like, do you notice it in
terms of actual Like do Chinese people come in and
buy more gold lately?
Speaker 4 (39:07):
No, not here particularly, but they might be buying it
from someone else. I really love to ask my gold vendor,
kahan is his name or Isaac is his name? Kahana
is the company, and you know his father and his
uncle put that together, put a business together. They went
separate ways, and he just inherited his father just retired
(39:28):
when he was eighty. He has a safe full of
gold and silver, and he has lots and lots of customers.
Who they are, I'm not sure. They're a variety of
different people, but personally, people reach out to me once
in a while. A family member, you know, a mo
might want to run into some cash, or they just
sold their business and they want to spend a half
a million bucks on gold or something like that, or
(39:53):
a variety of different people. It's I haven't seen a pattern. Okay,
I haven't seen a pattern, and I really haven't seen
a rush of either. Right now. The game is crypto,
so it's you know, that's what they're thinking about, and
that's what it is. I'm not a big fan of
it at all because I've held gold my whole life.
(40:13):
I've passed it, i've gave it, i've hit it, i've
sold it, I bought it, I melted it. I've never
held a bitcoin. I've never seen one. I've heard of them,
and I know they're out there somewhere, but I don't
want to wake up in the morning and need my
Wi Fi password to get my money.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
How secure is your safe passwords there? Just in your head?
I guess you could always bust it open if you
forget it.
Speaker 4 (40:37):
Right, Yeah, I mean it's the security is about the
cameras that are pointing at it. And yeah, there is
a combination plus a key. But listen, you know I
don't take my trays in and out every day I am.
I don't do any of that. To be honest, I
have managers and managers that manage groups of people that
I trust. Some people are trustworthy, believe it or not,
in this world. Few And the example I give is
(41:00):
like this, right, there's a lot of iron in the
world and a lot of base metals and there's very little,
but there is gold. Same thing with people. There's a
lot of untrustworthy people. There's a lot of base base metals.
There's a lot of base people, and then there's a
few amazing people that are special, just like the golden
(41:23):
medal is special and the universe creates them, just like
the universe creates gold. You look at the periodic chart,
you got to figure out where that came from. That's
up to you to decide. Wait.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Actually, one last question in uncut gems, and Adam Sandler
gave the stone to Kevin Garnett to like hold for
a while for good luck. Would jeweler ever do that?
Speaker 4 (41:44):
Yeah, anything can happen. I mean, you know, you might
be doing a promotion and you might be putting diamonds
on someone.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
And this stressed me out so much. The thought of like,
I'm just going a movie.
Speaker 4 (41:55):
Yes, is me too? Living it for twenty years been
stressful as well. So yeah, definitely give your gold and
your jewelry and your watchers to different people, and you
hope you find them at the end of the night,
whether they're going to award shows. Yeah, sometimes you tell them, hey,
you know one of the lines I use to prevent
myself to be in that situation. My insurance company won't
allow it. That's smart, So you know, you get this
(42:16):
is the jewelry business. If you put yourself a word
game that people are not prepared for, you're prepared for it.
But they're not. My insurance company. If I'll avoid me
if I give out my stuff.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Have insurance premium has been going up?
Speaker 4 (42:30):
They must be right, Yes they have. If you don't
make any claims, they kind of leave you alone. So
you know, the insurance is like almost a break even game, right,
you know, my insurance is expensive, and if you use it,
it goes up, and if you don't use it, you're
giving them the money and so on and so forth.
But better to have it and not use it.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Does it go up in tandem with like the price
of gold though? No? Huh?
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Mark soud Aga, Johnny tracks n YC. Thank you so
much for coming on odline.
Speaker 4 (42:58):
Hey, thank you you guys were thank you for giving
me this golden opportunity.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Glad you have given you your start.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
We had to have at least one pun. Yeah, in
the conversation.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
That was fantastic. Thank you so much. That was a
lot of fun.
Speaker 4 (43:13):
Glad.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
That was fun.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Tracy, It's always fun talking gold jewelry with Max. And yeah,
I mean, I guess the investment thesis has borne out
so far.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Old done, golds done great. But I know it was
a kind of a joke, but I really do take
this seriously that at any time, no matter what the
price of gold is, one hundred dollars worth of gold
is always one hundred dollars. And so if you know
for real, because if you're thinking like I have x
amount of dollar value that I want to store in
some other non fiat forum.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
This is true, right, Well, I'll tell you what was
interesting was the idea of like competition with the crypto.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yah. That was really interesting because.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
It did sound I mean, as he was saying, it
does sound like people are kind of you know, it's
sort of an either or.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Yeah two, especially for like the people who want to
like speculate on price. Right to the other things that
I thought were really interesting from that conversation. One is
his description of what specifically lab grown diamonds did to
the diamond industry, about sort of chopping out the low
end of the diamond market. Yeah, because it's, yeah, it
makes sense, why buy a cheap diamond or a low
(44:37):
grade diamond when you could get a high grown lab Like,
once you've already established that you're going to get something cheap,
why not get the lab grown version? And then the
way that that filters through to the price overall. And
I was just really interested in like his comments on
hiring and how difficult that is, Like I said, I
had heard the my barber said the same thing, Like
just this core aspect of like hiring people who are
(44:59):
sort of like with it, not seeking to get high
per se. Interesting interesting comments there.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
I'm sorry speaking of being a bad worker. I'm very
distracted by I looked up the diamond encrusted Ferbie.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
Oh yeah, so how much is that going for?
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Well, so it got auctioned off by A twenty four
the production company, and I'm trying to find how much
it went for, but I can't find it at the moment.
But I'm just staring at all these like animated videos. Yeah,
the diamond.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
For I have watched that movie again, do you want to?
Speaker 1 (45:31):
I found it so stressful the first time. I don't
think I could.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
It was really stressful. But you know, I know how
it ends now, so maybe maybe that'll make it a
little bit. Maybe that'll make it easier.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
There's some people are making imitation gold ferbies. I gotta
got one of those.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah, just get one of those.
Speaker 4 (45:47):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
Shall we leave it there before I just start like
narrating my online shopping.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yes, let's leave it there.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Okay. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracey.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Away, and I'm joll Wisenthal. You can follow me at
the Stalwart, follow uh Max sud Aga Johnny check out
his Instagram It's tracks NYC. Follow our producers Kerman Rodriguez
at Kerman Arman, dash Ol Bennett at Dashbot and Kilbrooks
at Kilbrooks. Thank you to our producer Moses Adam. For
more odd Laws content, go to Bloomberg dot com slash Odlots.
We have transcripts, a blog, and a newsletter and you
(46:22):
can chat about all of these topics twenty four to
seven in our discord Discord dot gg slash hotlines.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
And if you enjoy Odlots, if you like it when
Joe says he's going to be nice to the gold Bugs,
then please leave us a positive review on your favorite
podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber,
you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free.
All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel
on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for
(46:51):
listening in
Hey, they're aud Loots listeners. It's Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
And Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
We are very excited to announce that Oudlots is going
to Washington That's right.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
For the first time, we are going to do a
live public Odd Lots recording in our nation's capital. That's
going to be March twelfth in Washington, DC at the
Miracle Theater and guests will be announced in the coming days,
but in the meantime you can find a ticket link
at Bloomberg dot com, slash odd.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Lots, Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Tracy. Gold has had a really good year.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Here's a question. Here's a question.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
One of the last times we talked about gold, you
made fun of me for being a gold bug. Are
you going to start this episode out by doing the
same thing.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
No, you're completely vindicated. Gold has done really well over
the long term. Over the last several years, it's been
one of the best performing assets. It's stable. I take
back everything I ever implied negatively about gold.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
You're gonna be nice to the gold now, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Out, but it's look at the chart's great.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I will say I'm sort of an accidental gold bug.
It has not been a conscious choice to accumulate, but
it has turned out really well. So gold keeps hitting
record after record. As we're recording this, I think it's
at two thousand and six hundred announced.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, twenty six forty nine. It had gotten as high
as twenty eight hundred almost in October. But it's been
I mean, it's the last couple of years have been phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
That's crazy. And the other really interesting thing is like
it started going up even as the Federal Reserve was
raising rates, which is something that you don't normally see,
like normally has that inverse relationship to rates, that negative correlation. Yeah,
and I guess the demand has just been so strong
that it doesn't really matter this time around.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Can I say something? So you bring up the sort
of FED connection, et cetera. And so I want to
learn more about gold, but I don't really have much
interest in just talking to like another gold macro guy,
because I don't know what they say. They always sell
the same story. It's like inflation and currency debasement and
all that. Maybe that's all true, but I sort of like,
(02:32):
I want to talk gold, but it's just like I
sort of felt going into this conversation that we can't
just talk to someone who's just, you know, going to
tell the same story they could have told about gold
every single day for the last twenty years.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I think it's a very valid feeling to have. There
is something like physical about gold. Obviously, it's shiny, it's
fun to hold. Even like silver, you can have fun
stacking those coins, as I know personally, So it makes
sense to talk to someone who's in the physical market.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
We're gonna talk about what's going on in the gold market,
but actually get into why people love gold so much,
and why people want to be covered and why right now,
why right now, why people want to accumulate gold, have
it in their saves, have it on their person, et cetera.
We really do have the perfect guest. We're going to
be speaking with Max sud Aga, Johnny Max Aga. Johnny.
(03:19):
He is the founder of Tracks NYC, New York City
based jewelry dealer, and listeners might not We actually had
him on the podcast once in early twenty twenty, and
listeners might know him if they ever saw the movie
Uncut Gems, one of my favorite movies of the last
few years, because he actually was in the movie. He
played I guess kind of himself to some extent in
(03:42):
the movie. I think the character's name was Yussie in
the Diamond District, in the gold District in Manhattan. And
we're going to talk all these gold with Max masud
Aka Yussi. Thank you so much for coming back on
oud laws.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
Thank you for having me for a second time.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
What's your life been like the last four years? How
did that all change your life?
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Am I the od It's only been up from there
A little movie that you appeared in. The movie did good,
My odd lots did good, other podcasts did good, and
all the social media also it did really good for me.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Here's an important question. Did you bring me the diamond
encrusted Ferbie?
Speaker 4 (04:22):
In all reality? It wasn't even diamonds in that thing.
It was movie magic.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Honestly, I would take the brass version too.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
But it might not be good for your skin.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
But oh really, what does breast do your skin?
Speaker 1 (04:34):
It turns it green?
Speaker 4 (04:35):
She got it, she knows it.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
All all women know this. The big difference between gold
and brass.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
So other than the fact that gold doesn't turn your
skin green, people, what is it that people love about gold?
Why do people why do people buy gold from you?
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Well, gold is for people who have money to burn, right,
you know, if you're you could go back thousands of years,
if you're an Egyptian pharaoh and you're not starving, you
have any of labor and grain and land and property.
What don't you have? Well, I guess I want to
make a gold casket, a gold esophagus, so to speak,
(05:10):
and maybe some peasants might find some in the field
and I'll give him the grain he needs, and he'll
give me the gold. So it accumulates with people who
are not struggling, and that turns it into a status symbol.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
You know, Joe, I remember you actually wrote a really
good piece about the history of gold and how it
was sort of intermingled with power and this idea that
you know, like you needed a big military basically to
go out and get gold, and you needed a lot
of labor to dig it up, and so it became
very much associated with power.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
It's like a proof of work, right, Yeah, you can,
like even in the bitcoin sense. Also, you know, one thing, Tracy.
You know, Max mentioned the Pharaohs. Gold doesn't tarnish, right,
So it's like the historically, going back thousands of years,
it was associated with the God, just like one commodity
that is truly immortal in a way that most things
that we find on earth are.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Okay, I have a really dumb question, though. When gold
is hitting records like it is right now, do you
see more or less demand for jewelry?
Speaker 4 (06:10):
I mean, it's kind of stable, to be honest. You know,
when I started my business in two thousand and four,
gold was about three hundred dollars in ounce. Now it's
twenty five hundred and twenty six hundred, fluctuating over there.
I've watched it the whole way. It's increase in price
does have a little bit of effect on a demand,
but not that much. But you know, at some point
people can't afford what they want. Back in two thousand
(06:33):
and four, you could stack yourself with gold fourteen carrot
at twelve dollars a gram or whatever it was. It
was a great time to really stack gold. But now
your dollar doesn't go so far and you can't really
have as much as you'd like.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
But on the other hand, in two thousand and four,
if you bought one hundred dollars worth of gold, you
had one hundred dollars worth of gold. In twenty twenty five,
if you buy one hundred dollars worth of gold, you
still have one hundred dollars. So in a way, no
o like for real, like if you want to like
convert your dollars into something else, it does the same
job at twenty six forty nine as it does a three.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Yeah. Well listen until the guy that bought it at
two thousand and four walks through the door and his
hundred dollars worth of gold looks like a bigger pile
than your one hundred dollars worth of gold. But whatever,
you know, money's a game. Gold is one way to
play it. It's a safe way to play it. I
love it because I have a jewelry store full of
goal chains and gold jewelry, and as the price goes up,
(07:28):
what I can't sell, I melt and I still make
my money back, and that's a fantastic aspect of it.
And it never let me down, and I don't think
it ever let anybody in history down. So you can't
really go wrong with it. You might not be the
biggest winner like you are with the cryptos or whatever.
It is. Somebody who bought you know, a pizza pie
(07:49):
for fifteen or twenty bitcoin back in twenty eleven and
now could have been a billionaire or whatever. Yeah, it
might not do that, but it'll keep you safe and
sound and happy.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Do you feel competition with the crypt I mean.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
I don't want gold to go up. You know that
doesn't do anything for me. I know it will eventually,
but yeah, crypto had a major impact. Who knows if
crypto would never Satoshi Nakamoto never bothered to do whatever
he was doing or whatever that was. What would the
gold be right now if it wasn't trillions of dollars
(08:22):
literally inside of crazy cryptos?
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, it could be up more. What what are people
into these days?
Speaker 4 (08:29):
What are people into these days?
Speaker 2 (08:31):
So when they come into your store, what are they like?
How much is it like the crazy diamond and crusted
ferbies that Tracy didn't get today versus just wanting a
nice tasteful chain versus So what's what's that?
Speaker 4 (08:42):
I mean, listen, everybody everybody has their own little need,
you know, they want they want to give a gift
for a girl. So they might want to be able
to buy a tennis bracelet. Okay, they have a girlfriend,
or they have a side chick, or they have a
baby mama. I don't know what their situation is, but
you gotta buy or something, all right, So you gotta
go and you gotta buy it. Could be a tennis
(09:03):
bracelet that will be with done.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Call they tell you if it's for the side chick,
will they say that, by the way, this is for
the side Uh?
Speaker 4 (09:09):
I could usually tell what's going on.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Is the bracelet for the side chicks the one for
the wife?
Speaker 4 (09:16):
You know that varies from customer to customer. Put it
that way, okay.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Can I ask the basic question though? Why why do
you think gold prices happen going up?
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Well, listen, I mean, you know, we gotta do the math,
all right. It's one thing I learned since the last
time I was here to today. A lot of people,
maybe they might be in a beautiful building like we
are now, are in a professional field, but not doing
the mathematics here at all. All right, thirty six trillion
dollars and that one trillion dollars in interest you got
China buying it up like crazy. So I hear Central
(09:49):
Banks this that if you look into numbers, you're going
to find out what's really going on. And it's like
the Wizard of Oz out there. You really don't want
to look behind the curtain here because I don't know
what you're gonna find there and how this is all
going to come to a head as things that get turbulent,
you know, when in the new administration or what have you,
(10:11):
whatever you want to call it, and cryptos and quantum
computing and robots and this and that. I don't really
know how it's all going to play out, but I
know that if anything happens, I have my safe, my
combination to my safe, my security system, and my physical
assets that I can rely on. So that's what it
is for me. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
I feel like there is a tension there though, because
like if I imagine myself coming into a jewelry store and
I'm like, okay, I'm gonna buy a gold chain because
you know, it's a safe store of value and things
are uncertain right now, Like that's okay, But on the
other hand, I'm buying like something that's pretty frivolous, right.
It's like a it's a gold chain. What am I
really going to do with as it should be?
Speaker 4 (10:53):
Frivolous? I mean, you're not supposed to be on the
edge of starvation, you know, struggling against all odds. I
need choose and a winter coat and coal for my.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Furnace, you know, prioritize the gold.
Speaker 4 (11:05):
Yeah, we're supposed to be productive, successful people in a
modern world with surplus. Right.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Wait, but when people come into your store, do they
talk to you about why they're buying gold? Do they
say stuff like I'm worried about inflation?
Speaker 4 (11:19):
Yeah, some people do. I mean there's somebody that came in.
I'll never forget him. He was listening to what I
was saying and he came in. This is when gold
was eighteen fifty and he was painting houses and he
bought like ten ounces. So he saved up the money
eighteen five hundred dollars or whatever it was, and he
(11:39):
saved up the money and he said, you know what,
I'm tired of losing my money. I'm tired of spending.
He bought ten ounces of gold because of what I said.
And you know wherever he is now if he held
out to that gold, now it's you know, twenty six thousand,
five hundred or whatever. So he did great, and he
just bought ten ten ounces of you know, one ounce
each of Bouyon bars. But I feel like he even
(12:02):
got short changed. I think the gold price after that
ridiculous pandemic with all that printing, should be way higher
and then even twenty six fifty. But I'm not looking
for that to happen anytime soon.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
One thing that I always liked on your Instagram page,
and I'm not sure if you've done one recently. Used
to do like these really fun like sort of like
let's take a look at geopolitics and like the charts
and the maps. Have you still been doing that?
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Yeah, I mean that's not like the I found that
to be very entertaining. Well you guys, you guys, there's
you know, a little smart and stuff like that. But
for the average person in the crowd, sometimes I have
to do something a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
I remember, like years and I don't know what year
it was when you had like the chart of Iran
and the chart, you know, and it's differently tensions in
the Middle East.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
I do that on tracks news. Yeah, yeah, I have
a little side channel where I talk about what's really
going on in the world. But when it comes to
my main pages, I want to I have to make money. Yeah, okay,
So I have to go and I have to stick
around the materials, the diamonds, the sapphires, the gold, and
I have to market my jewelry to the masses in
(13:21):
a clever way. Make my money. Buy more gold chains.
I'm placing in order for half a million for seven
kilos okay of gold chains. I'm gonna flood out my
shop and I'm gonna hunker down and I'm gonna wait
for it all to end.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
What are your security costs right now?
Speaker 4 (13:39):
Well, listen, I mean I'm in the middle of the
Diamond district. You know, my rent is about fifty thousand
dollars a month. But that has three spaces up you know,
in fourteen A, which is on the thirteenth floor, and
then I have a mezzanine, and then I have a storefront.
And luckily there's you know, police cars there and two
precincts nearby. I'm next to Fox News and Rockefeller Center,
(14:01):
so I'm in a safe place. If if there's ever
was a place to stash gold, this is the place
to do it. So I'm gonna take advantage of that fact.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
What what would you leave for the day? Like how
big is that protocol of like locking up everything?
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Right? Well, my staff does it. I have cameras. I
see what's going on, and I have It's like a
casino or a bank. If you make a proper protocol,
you don't have to sit here and worry about it
so much.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
When you talk about buying half a million, seven kilos
worth of gold making a half a million dollar order,
what's that? What's that?
Speaker 1 (14:35):
Like?
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Who are the big players in the sort of wholesale
gold district?
Speaker 4 (14:38):
And for anybody doing the math that's in fourteen characters,
they're going to seven kilos, they're going to be think
and this guy's some not on the up and up.
That's coming from different chain manufacturers in Italy sometimes could
be Indonesia or somewhere else, and they have factories and
they source their gold however which way they do it.
You know, I've been to some of these factories. They're
(14:59):
beautiful factories, family run. But I like to buy my
gold in gold chains. Now if I buy gold bars
or grain, and I do that often as well. I
do that right on the street on forty seventh Street
with several different vendors there that are really really cool
people worth the visiting and learning about.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
What do higher gold prices actually do for your profit
margins because I imagine, like the actual manufacturing cost is
probably the biggest chunk.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Yeah, they know that's not the manufacturing cost is not
the biggest chunk. I mean, the gold, the material is
the biggest by far, and it eats away and then
you have to raise your prices. But jewelry is the
only industry in which you raise your prices and sales
could go up because people associate that with a higher quality, right,
you know, they'll look if people don't know anything about it,
(15:49):
they'll say, hey, this sapphire is thirty thousand, this one's
twenty thousand, so that sapphire must be better than this one,
you know. And that's how people think about jewelry, and
that's the psychology behind it. And you know that works
in our favor if we're building a jewelry brand or whatever.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
So, by the way, we're recording this on January seventh.
Just today, Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta CEO, the Facebook Guy,
released a video and about content moderation and a number
of people noticed he was wearing a nine hundred thousand
dollars watch. His style has changed. Yep, what do you
is there been? Have you noticed a shift in general
sort of public styles of people these days maybe versus
(16:29):
say ten years ago, of wanting to wear their wealth
on their wrist, around their neck more.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Yeah. Yeah, the people are growing up. Think things are
definitely changing and people are flashing a little bit more.
I mean, you know, there was the era of Steve
Jobs where he was the real leader and he was,
you know, the same pair of jeans and sneakers, New
Balance sneakers, very plain, and you know, once he passed,
(16:54):
other people are stepping out and the watch game is
I guess something that caught marks and he's in it
now and he's playing along, which is great for business.
And you know, that's really what's been going on. And
I think that's a great trend. A lot of people
wearing different time pieces. There's way more information about them now.
The market has kind of been democratized a little bit
(17:17):
where people could look up different watches and find their
certain styling. And this guy is stepping out, he's stepping
up and he's changing his personality. Maybe he did ayahuasca.
I don't really know what got into him, but it's
good for business, so I'm happy about it.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
He definitely had a little makeover recently. You can tell
we've been talking a lot about gold, but we should
talk about diamonds as well, because like gold's been going up,
diamond prices have been going down for a while. And
I imagine some of it is, you know, the pressure
from lab grown diamonds, but like what's going.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
On there, Well, the lab grown is in the market
and it's weighing it down heavily because you can't tell
the difference. And even I've buy them sometimes and you
know the real challenges it used to be able to sell.
You know, S I, two, I one J color as well.
(18:10):
These are all the gradings of the stone.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Keep so you didn't you buy an engagement ring and
forgot it.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
It was a family early so I never had to
go to the lucky then in those days.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
So the lower you know, lower grade stones, they used
to play a part. But now why would I buy
a lower grade stone? Right? It's here's a decent example.
Why would I buy a Honda Accord built from a
factory when I could buy a lab grown Mercedes.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Okay, you know, so it's.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Really it kills the low end. Yeah, if you're going
to go to the low end anyway, you don't really.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
But once you take out the low end, the high
end is coming with it and all sorts of things
are going down. But natural is still natural. Natural gems
are a different story.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
So the natural gyms are for the wife.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
Yeah, they're for their wives, and there for a way
for you to spend money.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
But wait, my engagement ring is actually an aquamarine. It's
not a diamond. But this reminds me, like, do you
see other types of stones coming into fashion, like the
more natural gemstones if maybe, like the lab grown diamonds
are kind of muddy in that market.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
Not yet nobody really knows what to do, okay, So
the engagement marriage these are you know, the highest societal
matters that one can discuss, and society doesn't know how
to decide that. There has to be some leadership. Someone
has to get engaged with the sapphire to start a trend,
some major celebrity or you know, God forbid. Malania gets
(19:46):
a divorce and gets a new husband. He buys her
a ruby. I think we'll see it.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Well Kate Middleton satire. Yeah that was a big deal.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Yeah, that's a big deal. And that's the way they
do it over there, because that was kind of Princess
Diana had, I think a safire. So I think that
was the trend, but it never really caught on into
the masses. Just yet, it's still diamonds.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Wait, why do things like fall in and out of
fashion like that? Like why why did diamonds have such
a hold on the engagement market.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
Still, that's a fantastic question. I mean this was you know,
propagandized by de beers at some point of time, somebody's
brainchild to be able to show commitment. And it also
the shoe fit, so they wore it. You know, she
got a one character, she's got a one and a half. Well,
(20:36):
my husband bought me a three character, but yours a Jkuller.
And it's just it's just a game for people to
play and for a way to have the guy spend money.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
One more diamond question, but like, how come diamonds? My
impression is notoriously if you get a giant diamond engagement ring,
like yes, okay, that's great, but if you break up
or you divorce and you want to go sell it,
it immediately loses a ton of value. Why is it
that diamonds never really like transformed into a store of
(21:07):
value in the same way that gold.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
It's a luxury product. Okay, listen, another example that I
give most of my clients, right, you could buy you
could go to the liquor store. You have a sixty dollars,
you could buy a bottle of champagne, or you could
buy a bottle of Jamaican rum. Okay, So one is
going to get you way more drunk for way longer
than the other. You know, Champagne, half the bottle is
(21:32):
gonna fly out when you open it, half the content
to the bottle. But Jamaican run rum, you could sit
under a bridge for a month and you know whatever.
So the fact of the matter is is one is
a luxury product for celebration and one is not. Okay,
if you really want, you know, if you're somewhere in
the Middle East or in Asia and you're getting married,
(21:54):
you're gonna cover your wife in gold so she could
feel secure about her you know, marriage or divorce or
commitment or whatever. But here in the West, you know,
at the top one percent of society or civilization or
whatever it might be. It's a different trend, and you're
buying something that is frivolous and luxurious. If you really
(22:16):
want something that's going to keep your value, give your
wife a gold bar or you know, you're not going
to see in some you know, on Park Avenue at
some a major wedding hall or whatever, a wife covered
in gold coins. Okay, all right, you know like you would.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Maybe one day maybe one.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Day, yeah, after you know, after the economy really I'm
gonna takes a noose dives then yeah. Maybe. So that's
the reason.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Let's talk about watches a little more. You sell watchers.
I'm looking at a ninety two thousand, fully iced out
sky Dweller Oyster Perpetual roll X watch on your website.
What's a cool watch brand these days? I mean Rolllexes
are always what are people into?
Speaker 4 (22:56):
Now?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
What's the hot thing in all?
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Well, the big boys obviously protect Philippe, Automar and Rolex,
and then if you really want to stand out, you
might get a brigade or you know, Cartiers or Cartier
as they like to pronounce it is something that's also cute.
But aside from that, Listen, you're getting a watch not
(23:18):
to tell the time. Let's just keep it real, okay,
You're getting a watch to have a status symbol. So
they call rolexes the new money. When you get your
first real money, you get yourself a rolex because you
know it's going to do the job. You've arrived, yes,
and then from there you go out further and further
into something that might be a little bit you know,
(23:42):
I'm unknown, but amongst the community of people in the watches,
it's respected. And there's definitely several different brands like that,
and none of them come to mind at the moment.
But you know, I usually rely on my friend Roman
Scharf when it comes to watches. He's an expert in
that field.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I used to know a big luxury watch collector in Appudapi.
Maybe that's unsurprising, and I never really understood the thesis
of like speculating on watches, but he was big into that.
He would buy and then he would trade and sell.
Is that an investment thesis that you buy into or
not so much?
Speaker 4 (24:21):
You know, Like at my store, I feel happiest when
I have a million in watches and a million in
gold or something like that. Okay, so you can't ever
go wrong with those assets. And they do Roles just
raise their list prices. So the prices went up on
all the watches, and anybody who has a Rolex gained,
(24:42):
and anybody who didn't is going to have to be,
you know, get their dollars up even higher to get one.
So you can't go wrong with some of those assets.
And you go look, you know, you'll see some run
into a YouTube video or something like that. Somebody who
bought a Rolex straight out of the army in nineteen
fifty eight or nineteen sixty three, and they bought it
(25:04):
and they kept a box and papers, and they bought
it for six hundred and fifty dollars, and today it's
worth a quarter of a million or one hundred and
fifty thousand or sixty nice. Yeah, I mean, you know
a lot of the things if you go and buy
them today, and you know you're a young person, if
you're a young person listening to this or's you know,
a few might be. And you go and you buy
(25:25):
Rolex and you don't take the stickers off, and you
buy a limited edition and you keep it there and
then you're sixty five years old. I know it seems
like a long long time from now, but that day
is gonna come. And if you pull that Rolex out
of that closet or out of that safe, you're gonna
really be happy with what's going on. And that's that's
the nature watches, because these companies and these brands do
(25:47):
something special for you know, their time pieces, and it's
and it works.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
I want to ask you a sort of real meat
and potatoes business question, but going back to safety and
security and uppers and like you probably have to like
hiring can't be people for your store, can't be like
totally trivial because you have to be able to trust them, etc.
That must be a huge part of it. You've jailed
it what you've seen. I was talking to my barber
(26:15):
recently and he was saying he had a hard time
hiring these days, and I said, well, what's the hard
part is that? Like, is it hard to find people
who can cut here? And he said, no, I'm actually
just that's basically what he said. He said, the hard
part is basically like just finding people who are sort
of normal and put together. And I'm curious, like from
your perspective, like what you've seen on that front.
Speaker 4 (26:34):
Yeah, you know, New York City is a run down
in a lot of different ways. So there's a lot
of people that I mean, you got to sort through
a lot of people to find a good quality human being. Yeah, okay.
A lot of them are usually going to be immigrants
that are coming here from all over the world that
(26:55):
are really looking to work and have a real work
ethic that they're expected to work. People that grow up
in this society want to get high. Work is something
that for them to just an obstacle for them to
overcome for them to enjoy themselves and binge on Netflix?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Have you seen the desire to get high? And I
mean here in the literal sense of drug use? Has
that changed a lot into twenty years that you've had
tracks and having to deal with it?
Speaker 4 (27:22):
Well, listen, you know I smoke periodically and so on
and so forth, but I actually I have to make
sure that I fulfill my obligations to my business. All right.
Alcohol is a drug that people partake in after work
or so on and so forth. But people have become abusive,
and you know, it's not just the drugs, it's the
theft and the overall lack of work ethic in today's society.
(27:46):
They just don't understand it. And you know, people are
doing the bare minimum where they're pretending to work or
so on and so forth, and the moment you check
on their work, that's a serious problem. Luckily, the AI
and the robots are coming, so they could finally go
to Central Park and play, you know, frisbee or whatever
they really want to do. But it's it's quite tragic,
(28:08):
and those people need to be scrutinized and filtered out,
and you know, they really don't have no any dignity
in your self respect in my opinion.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Wait, am I going to be buying jewelry from a
robot in the near future? Are they going to be
behind the counter?
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Well, the beautiful thing is, you know what I'm saying
if jewelry, jewelry is the last or one of the
last few businesses that you know, escapes the eye of Saurron,
which would be like a Jeff Bezos right, all right,
you know Amazon, you it started out with books. Now
it's paper towels. Now you could host a server now
(28:42):
anything you can imagine, movies, TV shows. He gobbled up
everything but jewelry. I still have this little, uh little
you know, territory that I could expand in and that's
by the grace of God if nothing else. So luckily,
jewelry is kind of those one of those few things
that's not going to have a barcode on it.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Just going back to hiring, how do you actually find
and source your employees? Do you put out an ad
or is it like through word of mouth through networking?
Speaker 4 (29:27):
I put out an ad, I asked to whatever you know,
if anybody has somebody, or I put up a post
on social media. But the best way to hire, I
find is to tell somebody, hey, you're here for a
one week trial, and if you do well, I'll extend
that to a one month trial. And if you do
well on that too much, I'm not hiring anybody. It's
(29:48):
like getting married to somebody. At this point, I'm not
marrying them until I trust them and really get to
know them and see them under a different circumstances. So
it's not like the corporate world. It's the diamond district,
and I really scrutinize them, and I also ask the
other opinions, say, how did this person do? Did this
person say good And once you have a good panel
(30:10):
of people, then you can really you know, rely on
different opinions and build a good group. It's the biggest challenge,
especially in the jewelry business. That's why people work with
their family.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
Is it front of shop that like, are you have
the hardest time? I mean, is it the people sort
of like working the counter talking about the jewelry showing
it to them or is it people in the back?
Is it people?
Speaker 4 (30:32):
What is everybody? Everybody who touches expensive materials is scary
to me. You know, somebody's picking up a casting, someone's
shopping for sapphires. Are they taking a bribe? Are they
picking off some stones? Are they taking a couple of grams?
Are they doing some other nonsense nefarious business, which I've
seen it all. I've had employees just take stuff off
(30:54):
the shelf and go to the scrapper and scrap it. Wow,
you know, I've you know, I walked into my shop
and I see someone's wearing a chain underneath their neck,
a big one underneath their shirt. But I could see
it through the shirt. I'm like, listen, what is that chain?
And you know he fast talks to me He's like, no,
I'm waiting for the client. He's gonna come right back.
I'm just gonna give it to him.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
And I'm like, I'm like, there's keeping it warm in
the meantime.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
I'm like, there's no way this person is just looking
me dead in the eyes and lying to me. I'm like, Okay,
turns out he was just stealing it, ready to go
home with it. I mean, listen, I've been through everything
you can imagine. I've had people forward my signature on
a check, you know, pick up double castings, all right.
You go to you have to pick something up for
a client, you pick up two, you get one to
(31:40):
the client, one for yourself. I've had it all, and
I've lost my faith in humanity because of it.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
So you know, it's a humanity will fade away, but
that fourteen carred gold chain will be there for thousands
of years. And this gets back to the gold is
permanently right back where we started. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Wait, So one of the most annoying things I find
about shopping for jewelry, and I mean, I don't shop
for jewelry that often, but when I do, it's like
the pricing transparency. You look in the case, and half
the time you can't read what's written on the label
because they're often handwritten or they've stuck the label like
under the ring and so you can't see it.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
That's the fun part.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah, I get that it's good for you, But what
do you do? What do those prices actually A? How
do those prices come about?
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Like?
Speaker 1 (32:29):
What do they actually mean? I assume they're all negotiable.
They usually are. And then B how often are you
actually changing the labels? Like if the price of gold
goes up twenty percent, yeah, twenty percent, do you do
you have to like go and rewrite all the little
price tag?
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Yeah, you might have to. That depends on what type
of store or what type of operation you're running. Or
sometimes you just do the math in your head. Or
sometimes you say, hey, listen, price of gold went up,
and next week I might change this tag by it now,
you know? So it's it is what it is. I mean,
the price is based on the raw materials plus labor,
you know, plus design, plus the fee that I want
(33:04):
to make. And like I said, it doesn't have a
bar code on it. It's not like buying a digital
camera right now, where it's four ninety five on Amazon
and for eighty eight at Walmart. You know, and you
just say, Okay, I don't want to save this or
I don't want to do that, or whatever it might be.
This is a it still has a little bit of
more of a romance to it to make the purchase
(33:27):
and learn the raw materials. And you know, if I
was to tell somebody out there, if you're shopping for something,
you're the client, and what should you do? Is the
real question. Okay, what should Tracy do? All right, Tracy
should walk into any jewelry store in the Diamond District,
look at whatever she likes, say how many carrots, how
many grams, what's the price, and then walk out the
door and buy nothing. Okay, go to the next door,
(33:50):
in the next door, in the next door, and then
come back and say, I saw this over here, but
can you do this for me over here eighteen fifty
I come right back. If they give you a look
or they do this, don't shop there. That's it. Don't
let the pressure you to buy, and don't let them
pressure you with a story and whatever it is, because
that's kind of the venus fly trap that people use.
They come in, they befriend you, and they use all
(34:11):
of these crazy social tactics to you know, get you
to get something to buy it. And if you really
want to be sharp, you know, when I go to
the diamond district and I have to buy sapphires right now,
I have to buy a lot of sapphires for to
manufacture chains. One person's telling me this quality for one
hundred and fifty dollars a carrot. The other one's telling
(34:32):
me this quality for one to twenty and other qualities
sixty dollars a carat for something. Somebody might have had
something in there safe for forty five and they're willing
to let it go for twenty five. And you can
manipulate that system if you shop around and turn the
tables on them. So that's what your responsibility is.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Actually, this raison is an question that I've sort of
wondered about. People talk about this, what's the advantage for
you of being in the district, because it sounds great
for the customer. You walk down five different stories, especially
if you're getting fairly generic like a ring or whatever.
But you know, this is this phenomenon that happens in
the economy of companies sort of agglomerating in one place.
(35:08):
What is the reason for why does it advantage you
to be in the diamond district versus somewhere else where
there isn't a neighbor.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
I'll tell you right now. Well, you know, maybe after
work today I'm gonna go. I'm gonna stop by a
Korean casting manufacturer that he's got some new models in
of stretchy bands that have springs in them that are
you know, diamonds all around. And that's not something I
could have created or invented. They're not reaching the end consumer.
They're not setting their own diamonds. They're just selling casting.
(35:36):
So they have that someone else might have a sapphire
or emerald that I need, And there is someone else
might be an incredible diamond setter. There's a casting company
that is able to do big castings. If I want
to cast a really big piece, Okay, someone's an expert
in silver. I can't hire all these people. I can't
put them all under one roof. And if you want
(35:57):
to be you know, if yeah, if I want to,
if I manufacture all my jewelry and I know exactly
what I'm selling and I put it in a store,
I'll go to Madison Avenue or whatever. I'll go downtown.
But if I really want to be able to wheel
and deal and be competitive, I want to work with
all of my friends that I've been doing business with
for twenty years in the Diamond District and use all
(36:20):
of the resources and all the creative energy that's there.
When it comes to the gems, the gold, the castings,
the labor, the sizing, the engravings, the laser etchings, whatever
it might be. It's a fun place to do business.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Do you expect hire tariffs to impact you at all?
Speaker 4 (36:41):
No, not really, I don't really know. I mean, I
hear so many stories about these tariffs. One person's this,
one person's that. Listen. You know, my experience getting people
to pay to play isn't the worst thing in the world.
So you know, it might be more difficult on one end,
and then someone's got more money on the other end,
and then this happens, and then that happens, and there's
(37:02):
a chain reaction to a variety of different effects. Try
try it at this point. You know, I'm tired of
looking at America declining ever since I got here in
nineteen ninety three. Try something.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
If I opened the store I'm actually going back to
the diamond Sometimes. Tracy and I joke around about opening up,
you know, going into the businesses of the people we
speak to. Can someone new just arrive in the diamond
district or would they be looked at a skance like? How?
Speaker 4 (37:25):
Like?
Speaker 2 (37:26):
How deep are the roots of everyone who's there?
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Pretty deep? I mean money talks. You could establish relationships
with money pretty quickly. I established minds with no money.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
But yeah, how'd you get how'd you get your foothold there?
Speaker 4 (37:37):
Well? I started photographing jewelry and putting it up on
eBay in two thousand and four when people laughed at
jewelry on the internet. So this is when Amazon was
pretty cheap to buy, and I think was selling books
or something at that time. So I was able to
start photographing jewelry and putting it up on the Internet.
So I would photograph it, put it up, sell it,
(37:58):
then buy it and ship it. And I was able
to feed different vendors money until they would take me serious,
and I learned the industry. But unless you have years
and years of experience, you don't really want to sit
here and go to the diamondustry and open up and
do anything right? All right, this is, you know, not
(38:18):
the type of thing that you just want. It's like
me saying tomorrow, well, I want to open up you know,
a dentistry something. You know what I'm saying, Like, I
don't know anything about that industry. I don't know anything
about carpets. I don't know anything about you know, manufacturing
or of you know, computers. It's not my field. I
dedicated myself to a field. So if anybody wants to
(38:40):
dive into that field, your grand kid might do it,
might do well, but you might have a hard time
with it. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
There's one other thing I wanted to ask you, which
is who is actually buying and whether you've noticed any
changes there because we hear stories. I mean obviously you
hear stories about like China's Central bank buying lots of
gold or maybe, but like, do you notice it in
terms of actual Like do Chinese people come in and
buy more gold lately?
Speaker 4 (39:07):
No, not here particularly, but they might be buying it
from someone else. I really love to ask my gold vendor,
kahan is his name or Isaac is his name? Kahana
is the company, and you know his father and his
uncle put that together, put a business together. They went
separate ways, and he just inherited his father just retired
(39:28):
when he was eighty. He has a safe full of
gold and silver, and he has lots and lots of customers.
Who they are, I'm not sure. They're a variety of
different people, but personally, people reach out to me once
in a while. A family member, you know, a mo
might want to run into some cash, or they just
sold their business and they want to spend a half
a million bucks on gold or something like that, or
(39:53):
a variety of different people. It's I haven't seen a pattern. Okay,
I haven't seen a pattern, and I really haven't seen
a rush of either. Right now. The game is crypto,
so it's you know, that's what they're thinking about, and
that's what it is. I'm not a big fan of
it at all because I've held gold my whole life.
(40:13):
I've passed it, i've gave it, i've hit it, i've
sold it, I bought it, I melted it. I've never
held a bitcoin. I've never seen one. I've heard of them,
and I know they're out there somewhere, but I don't
want to wake up in the morning and need my
Wi Fi password to get my money.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
How secure is your safe passwords there? Just in your head?
I guess you could always bust it open if you
forget it.
Speaker 4 (40:37):
Right, Yeah, I mean it's the security is about the
cameras that are pointing at it. And yeah, there is
a combination plus a key. But listen, you know I
don't take my trays in and out every day I am.
I don't do any of that. To be honest, I
have managers and managers that manage groups of people that
I trust. Some people are trustworthy, believe it or not,
in this world. Few And the example I give is
(41:00):
like this, right, there's a lot of iron in the
world and a lot of base metals and there's very little,
but there is gold. Same thing with people. There's a
lot of untrustworthy people. There's a lot of base base metals.
There's a lot of base people, and then there's a
few amazing people that are special, just like the golden
(41:23):
medal is special and the universe creates them, just like
the universe creates gold. You look at the periodic chart,
you got to figure out where that came from. That's
up to you to decide. Wait.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Actually, one last question in uncut gems, and Adam Sandler
gave the stone to Kevin Garnett to like hold for
a while for good luck. Would jeweler ever do that?
Speaker 4 (41:44):
Yeah, anything can happen. I mean, you know, you might
be doing a promotion and you might be putting diamonds
on someone.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
And this stressed me out so much. The thought of like,
I'm just going a movie.
Speaker 4 (41:55):
Yes, is me too? Living it for twenty years been
stressful as well. So yeah, definitely give your gold and
your jewelry and your watchers to different people, and you
hope you find them at the end of the night,
whether they're going to award shows. Yeah, sometimes you tell them, hey,
you know one of the lines I use to prevent
myself to be in that situation. My insurance company won't
allow it. That's smart, So you know, you get this
(42:16):
is the jewelry business. If you put yourself a word
game that people are not prepared for, you're prepared for it.
But they're not. My insurance company. If I'll avoid me
if I give out my stuff.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Have insurance premium has been going up?
Speaker 4 (42:30):
They must be right, Yes they have. If you don't
make any claims, they kind of leave you alone. So
you know, the insurance is like almost a break even game, right,
you know, my insurance is expensive, and if you use it,
it goes up, and if you don't use it, you're
giving them the money and so on and so forth.
But better to have it and not use it.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
Does it go up in tandem with like the price
of gold though? No? Huh?
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Mark soud Aga, Johnny tracks n YC. Thank you so
much for coming on odline.
Speaker 4 (42:58):
Hey, thank you you guys were thank you for giving
me this golden opportunity.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Glad you have given you your start.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
We had to have at least one pun. Yeah, in
the conversation.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
That was fantastic. Thank you so much. That was a
lot of fun.
Speaker 4 (43:13):
Glad.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
That was fun.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Tracy, It's always fun talking gold jewelry with Max. And yeah,
I mean, I guess the investment thesis has borne out
so far.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Old done, golds done great. But I know it was
a kind of a joke, but I really do take
this seriously that at any time, no matter what the
price of gold is, one hundred dollars worth of gold
is always one hundred dollars. And so if you know
for real, because if you're thinking like I have x
amount of dollar value that I want to store in
some other non fiat forum.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
This is true, right, Well, I'll tell you what was
interesting was the idea of like competition with the crypto.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yah. That was really interesting because.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
It did sound I mean, as he was saying, it
does sound like people are kind of you know, it's
sort of an either or.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Yeah two, especially for like the people who want to
like speculate on price. Right to the other things that
I thought were really interesting from that conversation. One is
his description of what specifically lab grown diamonds did to
the diamond industry, about sort of chopping out the low
end of the diamond market. Yeah, because it's, yeah, it
makes sense, why buy a cheap diamond or a low
(44:37):
grade diamond when you could get a high grown lab Like,
once you've already established that you're going to get something cheap,
why not get the lab grown version? And then the
way that that filters through to the price overall. And
I was just really interested in like his comments on
hiring and how difficult that is, Like I said, I
had heard the my barber said the same thing, Like
just this core aspect of like hiring people who are
(44:59):
sort of like with it, not seeking to get high
per se. Interesting interesting comments there.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
I'm sorry speaking of being a bad worker. I'm very
distracted by I looked up the diamond encrusted Ferbie.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
Oh yeah, so how much is that going for?
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Well, so it got auctioned off by A twenty four
the production company, and I'm trying to find how much
it went for, but I can't find it at the moment.
But I'm just staring at all these like animated videos. Yeah,
the diamond.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
For I have watched that movie again, do you want to?
Speaker 1 (45:31):
I found it so stressful the first time. I don't
think I could.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
It was really stressful. But you know, I know how
it ends now, so maybe maybe that'll make it a
little bit. Maybe that'll make it easier.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
There's some people are making imitation gold ferbies. I gotta
got one of those.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Yeah, just get one of those.
Speaker 4 (45:47):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
Shall we leave it there before I just start like
narrating my online shopping.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yes, let's leave it there.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Okay. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracey.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Away, and I'm joll Wisenthal. You can follow me at
the Stalwart, follow uh Max sud Aga Johnny check out
his Instagram It's tracks NYC. Follow our producers Kerman Rodriguez
at Kerman Arman, dash Ol Bennett at Dashbot and Kilbrooks
at Kilbrooks. Thank you to our producer Moses Adam. For
more odd Laws content, go to Bloomberg dot com slash Odlots.
We have transcripts, a blog, and a newsletter and you
(46:22):
can chat about all of these topics twenty four to
seven in our discord Discord dot gg slash hotlines.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
And if you enjoy Odlots, if you like it when
Joe says he's going to be nice to the gold Bugs,
then please leave us a positive review on your favorite
podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber,
you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free.
All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel
on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for
(46:51):
listening in
Hosts And Creators
Joe Weisenthal
Tracy Alloway
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