Speaker 1

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy halliway, uh, Tracy, I have an apology. I think I have to make two. Oh oh, this is exciting. Okay, go on. Well, you know how like I sometimes accuse you of being, um, secretly a gold bug and stuff like that, And sometimes I like troll you nicely about your dad being a gold bug and stuff like that, and being super into hoarding physical gold and jewels and gems and stuff like that. I'm not sure it's trolling if it's true. In the case of my dad, he definitely is a gold bug. But what do you what exactly are you apologizing for? No, I've also accused you of like secretly being that, even if you admit it, I'm really not. Look, I'm not a gold bug, but I'm not going to turn down when people give me gold as a present. Okay, Okay, that's fair enough, But I have at your sort of out of Okay, I'll move on. But I've always sort of suspected you have those anyway, the reason I have to apologize is because I'm coming around to that view myself and I myself. I've am kind of becoming a closet or maybe out of the closet gold bug myself. Isn't this like the third time you've changed your opinion on gold? I always go back and forth, but this time, Uh, it's actually specifically because of the guest that we were that we were going to talk to on today's episode. I recently started uh watching his videos on Instagram, and he's such a compelling salesman for gold and jewelry and gems that I'm kind of changing my mind on the whole thing, and I want to start getting to a hoarding gold. Well. Well, look, the field of people selling gold is kind of a crowded one, so I'm really curious what the sales pitch is exactly here. It must be a good one if it's if it's changed your mind again, well, you know, like for like the last ten years since you and I have been in you know, covering finance, most of the people advocating gold or like these sort of angry old fashioned types like Peter Schiff and they like spend all their time railing against the Fed, and honestly, like it's kind of tiresome. But I have been my eyes have opened up to a different case for it that I find to be far more compelling. What's the case. Well, let's before we get to that exactly, let's just backtrack a little bit. Um. I know you're in Hong Kong, but did you see the movie Uncut Gyms? I did. It was really really good, like pretty stressful at times, given it's about this New York jeweler or whose life is basically spinning out of control due to a gambling addiction. But it's really good. It's really good. It's really stressful. I would say it's probably my favorite movie that I saw, uh in the last year or two. I loved it. I want to see it again. But anyway, on today's episode, we are actually going to be speaking with a person who played a role. He was an actor in the movie, and he is a real life jeweler, so I know you're talking about. It was the behind the counter sort of jeweler or assistant in the main character's shop, jewelry shop, right exactly. So for those who don't know, who haven't seen it, you should see the movie. But Adam Sandler's character plays a jeweler in New York's Diamond district and one of his employees. The character Yussie is actually a real life jeweler who's been in the game for a long time, and he's here now and we're going to talk to him about what the business is really like, what the movie got right and wrong in why people love jewelry and gold so much. That sounds great. Let's do it all right, let's do it so without further ado, I want to bring in Mak sud Aga Johnny Hiss, the CEO and founder of Tracks and y See. He played the character Yussie in the movie. He's a jeweler. He sells jewelry, two rappers and others, much like uh, the Sandler character in the movie. Mak sued, thank you very much for joining us, Thank you for having me very much. Thank you. How did you get into How did this happen that you got a character in this movie and that you're an actual jeweler who is in Uncut Gems. Well, listen, they had this complicated scene in the showroom and Uncut Gems, and they needed to make it look like an authentic place with somebody who looks like a jeweler. And there's not that many people in Hollywood apparently that can fill that role. So they started looking for New York City jewelers Google. I guess I popped out. They auditioned me, and I got the part and I did the scene for him. So how did you get into jewelry in the first place? Then maybe we should back up, like, how did this become your career choice? How did I become an authentic New York City jeweler that they could google and find? Well, in two thousand and four, Um, when I graduated high school, Um, I just needed to start making money, and I saw that there was a market that was opening up on the internet on eBay. So I started photographing jewelry from a jewelry store I found on Canal Street downtown here in Manhattan and putting it up on eBay. And when I would sell a piece of jewelry, I would go and buy that piece of jewelry and chip it and keep the difference. And Uh, that wasn't particularly easy thing to do. It's easier to say now that it was to do back then. But I, you know, crow barred my way into the industry, and here I am. I didn't know I was going to be here fifteen years later, but I'm here and now like you're a legitimate star, I mean beyond the peering in the movie and all this attention you uh in your jewelry, your jewels, your shop. You sell the stars, you sell the rappers. Your website is amazing, has all kinds of no sort of traditional jewelry like chains, but um, you know, interesting like diamond encrusted you know, whatever they are. That's cartoon characters and pieces and Jesus heads and all sorts of stuff that whatever the market demands, I try to supply. How did you get into that aspect? So how did you go from essentially flipping cheap jewelry that you found on Canal Street on eBay into creating your own pieces and finding a high end market. If you want to increase your profit margin, you're gonna have to learn how to manufacture rather than buying from wholesalers. So little by little I learned how to manufacture, cast the gold, set the diamonds, get the diamonds from the diamond dealer for the right price, and uh, you know, and make a couple of honest dollars as they say. So I have so many questions I want to ask you but I want to get to the buy case for gold or for gold jewelry, because, like I certainly have never thought of buying a gold chain as necessarily an investment, but certainly on your videos and on your website you talk a lot about the investment case for gold. Why did you decide to take that approach, I'll tell you exactly why. Well, right now I'm wearing a chain that I bought in two thousand and seven that was around when gold was around seven hundred dollars an ounce or so, Okay, right now it's about close to sixteen hundred dollars an ounce, Okay, So if I scrapped that chain, the very same chain I'm wearing now, I'm going to get more than what I paid for it back then by a significant degree, almost double. And you know, for wearing a chain, that's pretty good. It's pretty good a return on investment, you know. So you just can't lose by buying that type of product. And when I I convinced my customers, or explain to my customers that if you're gonna buy something a luxury item, you know, there's a lot of options out there. You could buy a Gucci belt, you could buy this, You could buy high end fashion, high end brands. Not a single one of those is going to give you a return on investment in ten years. So it's really a no brainer. Gold could go down over the next ten years, and it has at times. Uh, It's sure, it certainly has, and everything could go down. But from the experiences and from from everything I've seen, I don't think it's gonna go down under a thousand dollars an ounce in in in my lifetime. I don't. I don't think it's gonna happen. So one thing in your videos which I was really drawn by is you do seem to combine both the sort of luxury goods pitch and you also talk about the fundamentals of gold. The first video I saw, I think was you had a chart of gold and you were looking at it right around the time that there was the strike that took out Sulamani in Iran and pitching jewelry as an investment around world events talk about what drives them? Is that a unique thing that you came up with, like our other people in the diamond district in your business, making making the pitch that way, No, they're not making the pitch that way and it's unique. And if you want to make any money or stand out in any way and you don't have anything unique, it's never gonna happen. You're gonna have to come up, Especially in the social media podcast world that we're in now, you're gonna have to come up with some information that people find useful. All right. So essentially what I try to do is I've tried to put on a show and the commercial break is my own merchandise. That's just pretty much what it is. Other people sell T shirts with their podcast. I sell jewelry and kind of sell a podcast with the jewelry, but the jewelry is sold on the podcast. Whatever works at this point, we should sell T shirts joke, yeah, or we should sell jewelry, I think yeah, So Max Suit, One thing I wanted to ask is, and this might be difficult to answer, but what percentage of your customers would you say are are drawn to the investment thesis that you're sort of or the investment pitch that you're putting out there versus people who just want to buy a nice jewelry. Well, you know, to be quite honest, I'm awakening them to that concept. Because they never considered it as investment pieces. But some of the people in hard times they get, uh they get their money back on some pieces that they buy. And it's common knowledge that you're going to get back more on a goal chain than on a diamond chain in certain circumstances. And they were always curious about that information. The people that had life experience, right the young kids, I just want to get iced out and throw away all their money. They might not really care about that. But people are already in their thirties or in their forties and they've been buying jewelry for a long time. They want to get what they pay for and they're looking for that information and nobody was filling that void. So I filled it in. And along with those people that we're looking for that information, I'm awakening a lot of other people to the fact that, uh, you know, um, there's a price and then there's value, and uh you know that that's a new concept for them. So you talked about how you started essentially moving up the food chain, so to speak, by uh contacting and getting relationships with diamond wholesalers and making your own jewelry. And one of the things that struck me. In the movie Uncut Gems was the main character, Hard Wrattner, Adam Sandler's character. He was always doing these deals with other people, and they're all word of mouth, including things like briefly pawning a Super Bowl ring for the week so he could get some cash so he could make another deal, and the person who gave him the cash would quote him a price or quot him an interest rates, and it was all just sort of word of mouth. Trust. Is that an accurate characterization of the industry in which everyone is just sort of trust each other at the word, and that's the key thing? Yeah, they definitely it's it's very accurate that the way they depicted him wheeling and dealing. And I've been in those types of situations myself, all right, umu, as much as one wouldn't like to admit it that I would. Sometimes you have to to close one deal. You have to have some value in some dead stock, you have to put it upon it for a week ago, get the other watch I set out, Go get it to the customer, then get the money, go bring it back, and and so on and so forth, and and hope you don't trip up along the way. And once you develop a reputation. Listen, if you have you know, um, a bunch of goal chains thirty thou dollars, and I have a client for it, I'm gonna come by and you have to decide whether I'm gonna go and grab that inventory and go to the airport and fly away and never see you again, or gonna go and sell it to that client that I have while you have the inventory that you want to move, and you have to wheel and deal, and you have to work with people who you trust, and that is just not much of evolution on that behavior since maybe ancient Babylon. You don't really know who you're trusting. You just get to know these people and um, you get a feel for their personalities, and you know, the little by little business experience will will will guide you. M So, Joe mentioned the pawning of the Super Bowl ring in the movie, and you just mentioned the idea of maybe sort of selling on something before you've received the money, or sort of like adding leverage to your deals. And there does seem to be an ecosystem of finance and and lending and credit built around the jewelry business. Why do you think that is like why are pawn shops and gold and jewelry intertwined to that degree. Well, I mean the materials are expensive, right, So when you're walking through the Diamond District, you're gonna have people hounding you from the street that are saying come into this shop, coming to that shop. Because you might be a high value person, it's worthwhile going through all this trouble and following a person down the street, um and bothering them maybe to get them into your shop. Right. You might not do that in front of the supermarket or something like that, but you'll do that in the Diamond district because that person might end up buying something that's fifty dollars and then the store owner is going to give you a commission of five hundred dollars and so on and so forth. So just the values of the items that you're dealing with create a whole new ecosystem, and things move quickly, so you're not gonna be able to do a lot of paperwork and things like that. So there's just a whole different environment that you can learn from, especially the way economics move, that you're not going to find in other industries like banking or something like that. And then you know, people over exert themselves. Right, People make mistakes. That's why economies fail for the most part. And and it it happens on a on a state level and happens on an individual level of people buy something they can't afford and they think that then they have hard times and they have to pawn it, and they think they're gonna come back in a month and they don't, right, and they and and and on and on it goes. And it happens with jewelry customers and jewelry business owners as well. Right, there's people that have been essentially printing money and doing great in the nineties and in the early two thousands that are now pawning their inventory, or people that were holding out when the gold prices at its peak and we're raising their prices, changing their tags, and now that are desperate to to scrap those pieces. And you know, just people make mistakes, They make miscalculations. And with the products like gold, which has its own dynamics, diamonds which have a completely different dynamic, and some of them are combined, you know, it just gets crazy. So one of the products for sale in the movie that's sort of very memorable is uh Adam Sandler's character. He has like a diamond encrusted furby and Tracy really wants one. Do you have any of those? They that those were made out of brass um in the in the film, they didn't actually make them out of golden diamonds, so they might turn in that green if you's better where too long? From an investment stand From an investment standpoint, you on your website, you sell like some that are just like basic change and then some, as you said, like diamond encrusted cartoon characters. Are those riskier the sort of more custom ones because you know it's fad like maybe like right now people are probably asking for like diamond encrusted baby yodas and stuff, but like in two years people might forget about that. So from like an investment standpoint, are those custom pieces a little for sure? For sure? I mean for consumer standpoint that yeah, it's definitely a luxury item, okay um. And from my standpoint as a manufacturer, well, the way it usually works is, let's say you make a hundred pieces and you want to get your money back by the time you sold fifty of them, all right, and the rest of them if they all right, you got your money back by number fifty and the rest of them is your profit. Now, if you sell out of those fifty twenty, you made a profit and the rest you scrap and you get back new materials. If you're stuck with him over a period of time, and that could be dicey, especially in this economy. You know that people don't have that type of spending power to consume these types of goods. So a lot of jewelers are getting stuck with this type of inventory, and it's really a tough business now more so than it never was. Can you give us an example of you getting stuck with a particular inventory, like one that was memorable for you, one that was memorable. Well, my my safest is filled with with stuff that I'm stuck with, so to speak. Um, but I've been pretty good and I'm not getting stuck with too many pieces. So the pieces that you're stuck with are the ones that are the least desirable. The most desirable things that you manufacture are going to be the first to go, and the least desirable are gonna be stuck with. So the stuff that that I'm stuck with, this the stuff that doesn't really attract anybody. Just rings that you know, we're off putting and things like that. But the good pieces, you know, I would make characters at a video game Street Fighter, or you'd make a Genie coming out of a Laddin's lamp or that. But those are all gone and people enjoyed them, and I don't have them anymore. So if I came in tomorrow and I said, you know, and I want to get a gift for Tracy. I want to get her that diamond and crushed furb, what would you require? What would be the process? I will maybe what would be the process? What would you expect to me? Do I have to like put money down? Like? What? How would how's the process? I'll explain exactly what the process is. So if you want to cust manufacture anything, you're gonna have to put a deposit right down to so we could start making the model of what it's gonna look like on a computer in three D. Once that's done, all right, so you put a thousand dollars. Now, let's say you have a ten thousand dollar budget on whatever you're manufacturing, whether it's a it could be a customer engagement ring or a Furby piece or zodiac whatever. So you put a thousand bucks down, Well, show you what it's gonna look like. We do all the calculations so much, it's gonna weigh how many carrots it's gonna be, and then you have to put a production deposit down, which is gonna be around another five thousand, four thousand, and then we finish it. You see it, and you finished paying for it. You wear it. Tracy's happy, You're happy, I'm happy, Bloomberg's happy. I'm not sure if all of us, if I'll see what happens if I tried to expense that, But if all of us are going to be happy, I think we have to do it. Make a gold heavy and you'll be good. I will be the happiest of all. So yes, we should do this. Um. So, you mentioned three D printing just then, and in watching some of your videos that definitely comes up a lot. How important was three D printing or how much of a revolution was it for the jewelry making industry? Like how did people make these custom pendants, whether it's furbies or baby yodas or Jesus heads or whatever, How did they do that before? And did it become more popular once three D printing came into being. Well, they were doing it by hand, So they take a piece of wax and carve it out by hand, and the waxes that they would make were far more primitive than what you could make on a computer now. And you know the complicated things like back uh you know how where a hundred years ago or so, like a Faberge egg, that was stuff that was done by hand and that was extremely difficult to do. You'd have to get an incredible craftsman to do that. Now you could make that type of stuff to even higher quality and higher detail on a computer. So you know, it's it's it's a world away and which you could manufacture. The jewelers have really not tapped into it just yet to the to the capacity that that that it could be, because your capabilities are limited by your imagination with this machine that prints out whatever it is you came up with. So yeah, I definitely recommend people should check out your Instagram and check out the three D printing videos because they're really cool. Are you rare? Like if you were to go to other shops in the Diamond district? Is that still something that most of them haven't gotten into they don't have Well, you have to manufacture to a high degree to own a three D printer. The three D printer I just bought, and I just bought it a couple of months ago, was about sixty tho dollars, okay, And we did some research and we we got a pretty good one, and so on and so forth. We gotta learn how to use it first and foremost. It's not like the printer you have at home. There's some maintenance there and the materials you gotta buy. And so so I had a girl that knew how to do it, so we're able to make that leap, and that's pretty forward thinking. The average jeweler is not going to have that. The manufacturer might have it, but it's still new technology, so you know, Grandpa is not going to be able to tune into it that quickly. And I'm more a little bit, I guess, as far as jewelers are concerned on the younger side. So I'm trying to use any advantage I could get, and that's definitely a big one. This feeds into something else that I always wondered about. But if I buy a piece of jewelry, what percentage of it on average, I guess is going to be the actual labor cost versus the input cost of the materials like gold and diamonds. Well, that depends who you're buying it from, all right, if you're buying it um from Tiffany and Coal. Let's say, for example, tiff a silver is about two dollars a graham. So don't do much more math than that when you're going in there. I don't wanna, you know, disparage the entire industry, but when you're going to buy a shirt or when you're going to buy something, if you think about the cost of the material versus what you're paying for it, it's not fair to apply that to the jewelry business too much. And I and the only one to blame for that because I started making that application for people. You know what the value is. But there's a there's a significant difference. And especially for the most part, you're paying for branding. Okay, you're going to Cardiare and you're buying a gold bracelet and diamond bracelet, but you're paying more for the name Cardier. You're paying more for the name Tiffany and Co. That's why there is a Diamond District here because once people realize, Okay, I bought this one carrot uh platinum ring for Tiffany for twenty thousand, but the materials to manufacture that ring cost seven thousand or eight thousand dollars in the Diamond district, and the materials are really four thousand. I mean you you you do the math, and it creates a demand for the Diamond district for these bigger brands. And but you know, then you also increase your risk when you're making that type of purchase. Tiffany and Co. Is gonna get you exactly what you pay for. You wanna save ten thousand dollars, you might or you might get uh you know, some sort of disappointment or this or that, and there you are simple to reality other than say buying from you, because I'm sure you'd recommend yourself as the most reputable and honest jewelry dealer. First for your sort of an average person, what would be some things like sort of like buying tips that they should know so that they don't get hoodwinked when they're buying a piece of jewelry somewhere in the diamond Sure, well, listen, you want to read the reviews. Okay, so we're celebrity shop. But it doesn't matter what I say, because the average person does what celebrities do, okay're not sitting here using information to to make complicated decisions and things like that. That's what I've realized, okay, and that's why I have such a hard time, you know, marketing the business to a certain extent, because the average person doesn't care about information or value or anything like that. They're all celebrities are buying here. I'm buying here too. I'm a celebrity. Now that's the way they're thinking. That's the end of it. But for the person that is interested that, you just got to do your research reader reviews, look up the price. Google is an extraordinary tool. You know. You can figure out the distance from here to Mars or or anything you could imagine. So if you really want to research the price of something, you just put price of one carrot, or price of this, the price of that, and do simple math like I did when I was twenty one years old, you know, or whatever it is to figure out how to get the ball rolling. And that's just a general rule for anything. Max Suit. You mentioned that the dynamics are different for gold versus diamonds. And the movie Uncut Gems. I don't think I'm giving anything away, but it revolves around this massive black opal um that's uncut. Can you explain like the differences in how those different markets actually work, Like, what is the difference between how gold functions versus how an uncut gem or a diamond functions. Sure? Well, first and foremost doesn't matter if you're buying a gram of gold or ten kg of gold. It's the same price per gram, alright, so the price doesn't diminish with how much you buy. But with aamonds that greatly affected. Right, if you're buying a thousand carrots of diamonds or one carrot, you're paying two completely different prices per carrot. And that is because liquidating gold, which is gonna you know, the bank will buy it or something like that, you know, a governments buy it or and and has that type of demand where they'll they'll trade it for cash. And at a moment's noticed, diamonds don't have that. You have to find a consumer to sell your diamonds, and that is a difficult process. Okay, there is a demand for diamonds everybody wants diamonds. No one's gonna be um object to having diamonds. If I started giving out diamonds in your office, I don't think i'd get to people to say no, no, thank you. But the reality is how much are they willing to pay for them? Okay, So if I'm going through their job of advertising a business and finding the consumers, and I'm gonna be able to buy a thousand carrots a month or something like that, like right now, I buy about five dred carrots a month or something around there, you know, I should definitely get away better price than the person buying one characters. I'm allocating all of these consumers, and I'm putting together all these marketing plans and investing all these marketing dollars to be able to move those goods. So you go to the word uncutting uncut gems. So the way the let's just put that on pause for a second and I'll give you an insight into how these materials travel. You dig them up from wherever they're at. Then comes the process of cutting them and polishing them. All Right, So most of that happens in India. The labor is cheap and the stones get there, they get over there. So half of the game is buying the rough and then having it polished and having the polishers. And there's only there's some big players doing that stuff. Okay, whether that's coming for um in Israel or Belgium for the bigger, bigger stones and for the smaller stones, is going to be happening in India. So once you've bought the rough for cheap from the minor is whatever it's going on there, I'm not sure because I'm not in that part of the business. And then you get it polished with your big polishing production wherever that's at. Now you're bringing it to the Dimond district to go get it to the end consumer. And that's where I come in because I'm getting into the end consumer. So if you're gonna give me, if I'm gonna sit here and liquidate all these these materials into cash, I'm gonna make sure that I get it for way cheaper than what I sell it for. Otherwise I'm not gonna do it. So that is um. That is just the game of it, all right. There's the miners, they're playing their game, the polishers, and then the polishers bring it to the wholesalers and bring it to the retailers. And you know that's that's pretty true how it moves. At some point you say you don't, you're not at the spot where you interact with the miners. Could that be on your roadmap at some point as you seek to expand and get bigger and go every single jeweler that's ever found success. If you want to increase your profit margin, and you cannot increase your prices because you're gonna other people are gonna cut into your into your market share, so you have to lower the cost of your product. Okay, Now what's the cheapest way of lowering the cost of your product? Well, you could mind the goods yourself. Now obviously you don't have the time to mind the goods yourself. Well, then you have to get somebody else to do it for you. And then the game goes right and you where you're gonna get somebody to do that? Well, you could either just buy it from the miners directly and then get it polished yourself, which is the bigger players. That's how they do it. And then your margins increase when you when you're doing things like that. So the people that were able to over years, you know, build a dynasty over there and buy Some of the buildings on Fort Street between fifth and sixth Avenue were ones that got directly from the miners got the you know, uh, the polishers had a and and the cutters had a very close relationship with them and got the product from the ground level, and we're able to sell it at the retail. That's the only way to really go in that type of industry. They controlled the whole supply chain, you have to. So you mentioned, well, when we were talking about diamonds, you said, everyone loves diamonds, and you know, if you're handing them out for free, no one would say no. But one thing that we hear a lot nowadays is that millennials or younger people actually aren't buying diamonds as much as they used to, maybe because they're out of fashion in some ways, or maybe because there's concern about where the diamonds come from, like whether or not their blood diamonds, and maybe also there's concern about artificial diamonds sort of contaminating the supply. Do people still want diamonds and do any of those trends like lab grown diamonds actually impact your business. Yeah, everything impacted from from everything you mentioned. Well, you know, certain millennials are off put by diamonds nowadays because they have a whole different mentality. And number one, they really don't have the money to buy any diamonds, all right, that's just a reality as well. They don't have any of that extra income that they're gonna sit here and start getting diamonds for their girlfriend on Valentine's Day and things like that. They're lucky if they could take them out to a to a normal restaurant. And on the other hand, well that's on one half of it. The other half, the demand is increasing for more of a hip hop style jewelry as hip hop is expanding around the world, and it's really a force that people are underestimating because it's capturing the youth in ways that it's it's never been captured before more and more. Right, So, whether you're in Europe or now in Asia and you're and you're fifteen and sixteen, and you're listening to these rappers uh a little Pump or Takashi or what have you, and they're spending two hundred fifty thousand dollars on a piece of jewelry. All right, they're not sitting there and listening to the not finishing their social studies, homework and things like that right now. For you guys over here, you're not in that mentality. But they're young, and they're impressionable, and they're not being influenced, uh, you know, by fiscal policy. You know, they're they're being influenced by someone who took two fifty dollars and bought a necklace, and they want to participate in that, and they participated, so that that market share is probably gonna grow and uh, and the one that's gonna decrease is probably gonna be these uh, these millennials that there are there. They might just switch to what they're buying. They might buy a little sapphire in a silver ring or something like that, or something on the cheaper end. Uh, there's still a profit margin there, so to speak, that the market is going to shift around that. And then when it comes to lab made and grown diamonds, well, you know, diamonds have a destiny, all right. The reality of diamonds is there a carbon crystal, and that carbon crystal would be uh has amazing acoustic properties, Okay, and it also has uh, you know, it would be great for um, a window on a spaceship or something like that, or you could put it. You could if you could make an engine out of diamonds instead of out of steel, it'd probably last to you know, a couple of million miles or maybe indefinitely. So it has a destiny that's not just for you know, aesthetic appeal or something like that. So it's and it's gonna end up there. I don't know how long it's gonna be, but I think that diamonds are gonna be manufactured more and more, and then once it has some industrial purpose, I don't know what's gonna happen, but it's gonna be interesting. Well, this gets to something that I really wanted to ask it. I think it's sort of one of the big things that's been on my mind since watching the movie, which is just sort of the obsession with diamonds and gems. And the movie opens up with one of the miners uh in Africa getting injured. We see the extreme length that the people on the diamond district go to, like get their hands on gems. We see the impact that the gem in the movie had. Kevin Garnett the basketball player inspiring him uh in the movie to when the NBA Finals and so forth. Just in your view sort of like from a big picture standpoint, what is it about diamonds, What is it about gems? What is it even about gold that just sort of like hits people at this fundamental level that they just go crazy to dig up rocks the earth. Well, that's a good question. Um. Gold is called the most beautiful element. Okay. So there's I don't remember how many elements there are, I think like a hundred or something like that, um around there, and out of all of them, the most beautiful is gold. Okay. It has an incredible reflective properties. It reflects light. Uh, it looks like sunshine when regular light hits it reflects it. It's quite beautiful. That's all it needs, right. It's to some people in this world, beauties all they all they need to get by. And that's what that's what these gems have. And they attract at tension. Right. Um, If there was a bar of gold in a room and somebody walked in it, their eyes are immediately on it. And if you and if you have that substance that those eyes are going to kind of transfer on you. You kind of share those properties all right on on on a subconscious level with them. You have it, why don't Why doesn't everybody have gold? Right? I just did a calculation the other day. If we were going to distribute all the gold that's ever been mined evenly, everybody would get around eleven grams uh per person okay of gold, right if we were all equal. But we're not all equal. Some people have massive amounts, some people have nothing at all. And who has the massive amounts? Who's who? And what's what? All that just plays into into that and and and that just there's an advertisement for for people that they have this beautiful stuff and any others. And the other hand, it is beautiful because I have a couple of sapphires um I own, right that I didn't I'm saving or I'm using for something interesting. And when you look into some of these sapphires, maybe it's in my head, but it's such a beautiful blue, right, and it's and some of the ones I have are very rare as opposed to some of the really dark ones that don't have that luster. And you find that perfect pitch of of color and cut and clarity and and it becomes something so rare that you really just enjoy just looking at it. You know, I don't know, is that your favorite genman sapphires. I love sapphires. It's it's been it's my birth stone. So you know when I yes, when I so just you know when I when I first saw the sapphire and I was told was my birth stone? Again, just a psychological impact of that when I was young, you know, I was just intrigued. But okay, it's my birth stone. Can I have one? No? You don't have any money, right, um? Or here's this little one or here's just this tiny one, but where's the bigger ones? Mom? Or this one? That one? And and you have that feeling that this is something you want but can't have. Why not, Well, there's not enough of them for everybody. You have to be special to have one, and there's just it's just a part of the human experience that's not really going anywhere. Tracy. If I get you a gentleman crusted ferby, will you get me a sapphire for my birthday? That sounds like a really good trade actually, because I'm pretty sure the ferby is going to cost so yes, yes, you can have a small dark staff fire. I'm getting a lot of business here. I'm hoping you guys are gonna be buind it from me and no one else. How's your I'm curious how your life hasn't changed in anyway since the movie came out. Yeah, definitely, um uh, it's definitely a benefit. Right. The way I equated is if I was trying to put myself in a movie for a commercial, I think it would cost me over a million dollars to do something like that, right if I was if I had it came out with a new car line or or a car and I want to put it in a new James Bond movie. Right, it was, you know, and I had to you know BMW and I wanted to put it in there. I think it would be a quite expensive endeavor. So for me to be a jeweler in the Diamonds and get a part in a in a in a Diamond District movie one of the very few that there's been, um is a blessing essentially, So it definitely has benefit me. And it just to hit international Netflix, uh so people are messaging me all the time, and then when it hits regular Netflix, people are gonna watch it. It might be a cult classic, so I might be. Yeah, I think you know, so, I think it's gonna be a millionaire's every one in them and have opinions on of course. Yeah, and they all like it. It's it's pretty good. Well, Uh, Marx sud I'll go, Johnny, thank you so much. That was fantastic. Been looking forward to this conversation a long time and I appreciate you coming on. Oh, I've one last very small question. And if I don't get diamond and crested furby, like what, let's say I don't want to spend quite that hard. What's just sort of like a nice, like basic thing to get someone? Um, well, you know that's a good question. Um, some gold jewelry is cool and something with gems, and it's something with diamonds, but it's it's something personalized. I think would be would be the uh has the best effect on people when I make a customer engagement ring or a customary ear rings with birth stones surrounded by diamonds or something, um, custom made with your involvement and the jeweler's involvement, and it has a special output for the person that receives it. All right, I'll be I'll be by the shops there, all right, sounds good. Thanks. I appreciate you, Joe. Just in case you're wondering, In addition to a diamond encrusted furby, I would also take a gold plated outline of the vix curve. You can have that made, Okay, I have to think about what I want customized from you it. I'll definitely I'll get you one of those two things for sure. Excellent, excellent. So I think I am. I'm a legit, I'm a goldbug. Now I'm totally sold and I totally get it. You know what I really liked in fact um, among other things, I thought Mark SuDS point about how little gold uh everyone would get if we had to distribute it evenly, because at some level, okay, yes, life isn't fair, but it is the ultimate sort of emblem of like, yeah there is there are aspects of the world that are a zerosome game, and if you have more gold then that means someone else has less of it. And just sort of like that sort of drive like something about that really resonates to me is I can see why people not only want to acquire it, but show off that they have it. I think you're becoming an economic nationalist. But there's one thing that we didn't discuss, which is okay, So obviously gold is a status symbol. It signifies power and it signifies wealth. But in the movie and Uncut Gems, gold and all this jewelry and the black opal that we spoke about actually becomes a problem for the guy, right. It's it's a source of instability in his life and insecurity. And I wonder, you know, if you do put all your money into gold, then obviously you have a storage issue. You're gonna have to put it someplace safe. You might worry about wearing all your jewelry out on the street. I don't know, but it seems like it can be a source of insecurity as well as a display of power. Yeah. I thought about that too, like a source of insecurity, source of stress, like just having to put everything in a safe every night, thinking about ensuring that. Or you go buy these jewelers, jewelers when you walk across them at night, and of course they've emptied out their shop windows so there's nothing even visible like that whole process of having to protect protected, you know to some extent protect yourself. Uh. It definitely seems like, yes, it's a source of power. It also seems like it would be a major source of anxiety. That said, I still want the diamond Furby. I would still take it, Okay, I would guard it. I would wear it every day and take such good care of it. All Right, I'll see what I could do. I'll see if I could expense it. All right. This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway. And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwork. And you should definitely follow our guests on Instagram is Uh it's really amazing to watch. He's tracks n y c. Name is muksud Aga Johnny awesome Instagram account. I swear he's turned me into a gold bug. And I'm going to go to his shop uh soon and you can see him talk about all these things and show the manufacturing process. It's a very cool. Also, you should follow our producer on Twitter. She's Laura Carlson. She's at Laura M. Carlson. You should follow the Bloomberg head of podcast Francesca Levy at Francesco Today and check out all of our podcasts under the handle at podcasts. Thanks for listening.