This Is Why People Are So in Love With Gold

26:34Okay. So you can't ever go wrong with those assets. And they do, Rolex just raised their list prices. So the prices went up on all the watches and anybody who has a Rolex gained 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 1958 or 1963 and they bought it 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.

27:16Must be 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, you know, a few might be. And you go and you buy a Rolex and you don't take the stickers off and you buy a limited edition and you keep it there. And then you're 65 years old. I know it seems like a long, long time from now, but that day is going to come. And if you pull that Rolex out of that closet or out of that safe, you're going to really be happy with what's going on. And that's the nature of watches because these companies and these brands do something special for, you know, their timepieces and it works.

27:57I want to ask you a sort of real meat and potatoes business question. But going back to safety and security and operations 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. But I'm curious what you've seen. I was talking to my barber recently, and he was saying he had a hard time hiring these days. And I said, well, what's the hard part? Is it hard to find people who can cut hair? And he said, no. They're on drugs. That's basically what he said. He said the hard part is basically just finding people who are sort of normal and put together.

28:35And I'm curious from your perspective what you've seen on that front. Yeah. New York City is 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 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 there for them to, just an obstacle for them to overcome, for them to enjoy themselves and binge on Netflix.

29:17Have you seen the desire to get high? And I mean here in the literal sense of drug use. Has that changed a lot in the 20 years that you've had tracks and having to deal with it? 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. The alcohol is a drug that people partake in after work or so on and so forth, but people have become abusive. And it's not just the drugs, it's the theft and the overall lack of work ethic in today's society. They just don't understand it. And people are doing the bare minimum or they're pretending to work or so on and so forth.

29:57And the moment you check on their work, that's a serious problem. Luckily, the AI and the robots are coming so they can finally go to Central Park and play, you know, Frisbee or whatever they really want to do. But it's quite tragic and those people need to be scrutinized and filtered out. And, you know, they really don't have any dignity or self-respect, in my opinion. Wait, am I going to be buying jewelry from a robot in the near future? Are they going to be behind the counter? Well, the beautiful thing is, you know what I'm saying? if jewelry is the last or one of the last few businesses that escapes the eye of Sauron, which would be like a Jeff Bezos, right?

30:38All right. Amazon, it started out with books. Now it's paper towels. Now you could host a server. Now anything you can imagine, movies, TV shows, he gobbled up everything. But jewelry, I still have this little territory that I could expand in. And that's by the grace of God, if nothing else. So luckily, jewelry is kind of one of those few things that's not going to have a barcode on it.

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32:35See how your business can get stronger and go farther with Chase for Business. Learn more at chase.com slash business. Chase for Business. Make more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., member FDIC. Copyright 2025, JPMorgan Chase and Company. 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? I put out an ad. I ask to whatever, you know, if anybody has somebody or I put up a post on social media.

33:13but the best way to hire I find is to tell somebody hey you're here for a one week trial and if you would 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 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 a 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 of people then you can really uh 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 yeah is it front of shop that like are you have the hardest time i I mean, is it the people sort of like working the counter, talking about the jewelry, showing it to them?

34:09Or is it people in the back? Is it people? 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 the shelf and go to the scrapper and scrap it wow you know I've you know I've walked into my shop and I see someone is wearing a chain underneath their neck a big one and 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 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 and I'm like I'm like there's no keeping it warm in the meantime yeah 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 forge my signature on a check um you know pick up double castings all right you go to you uh you have to pick something up for a client you pick up two you give one to the client one for yourself i've had it all and i've lost my faith in humanity because of it so you know it's humanity will uh fade away but that 14-karat gold chain will be there for thousands of years.

35:33This gets back to the gold is permanent. Right back where we started. Yeah. 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. Sure. 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 under the ring, and so you can't see it. That's the fun part. Yeah, I get that it's good for you. Sure, sure, you do? What do those prices actually, A, how do those prices come about? Like, what do they actually mean?

36:10I 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. 20%. Yeah, 20%. Do you have to like go and rewrite all the little price tags? 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. Next week, I might change this tag, buy it now. So it is what it is. I mean, the price is based on the raw materials plus labor, plus design, plus the fee that I want to make.

36:44And like I said, it doesn't have a barcode on it. It's not like buying a digital camera right now where it's$4.95 on Amazon and$4.88 at Walmart. smart you know and you just thought okay i don't want to save this or i don't want to do that or whatever it might be this is a uh it still has a little bit of more of a romance to it to make the purchase and uh 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 do you what should you do is the real question okay let's 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?

37:26And then walk out the door and buy nothing. Okay, go to the next door and the next door and the next door and then come back and say, I saw this over here, but can you do this for me over here? $18.50, I come right back. If they give you a look or they do this, don't shop there. That's it. Don't let them 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 these crazy social tactics to get you to get something to buy. And if you really want to be sharp, when I go to the Diamond District and I have to buy sapphires, right now I have to buy a lot of sapphires to manufacture chains.

38:07One person's telling me this quality for$150 a carat. The other one's telling me this quality for$120. Another quality is$60 a carat for something. Somebody might have had something and they're safe for 45 and they're willing to let it go for 25. And you can manipulate that system if you shop around and turn the tables on them. So that's what your responsibility is. Actually, this raises a 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 can walk down five different stores, especially if you're getting something fairly generic like a ring or whatever.

38:42But, you know, this is this phenomenon that happens in the economy of companies sort of agglomerating in one place. 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? I'll tell you right now. Well, maybe after work today, I'm going to go, I'm going to stop by a Korean casting manufacturer that has got some new models in of stretchy bands that have springs in them that are 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.

39:15They're just selling castings. 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 to be, you know, 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 20 years in the Diamond District and use all 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.

40:14It's a fun place to do business. Do you expect higher tariffs to impact you at all? 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, in 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 a chain reaction to a variety of different effects. Try it at this point. I'm tired of looking at America declining ever since I got here in 1993.

40:50Try something. If I open the store, I'm actually going back to the diamond. Sometimes Tracy and I joke around about opening up, 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 askance? Like how like how deep are the roots of everyone who's there? Pretty deep. I mean, money talks. You could establish relationships with money pretty quickly. I established mines with no money, but. Yeah. How did you get how did you get your foothold there? Well, I started photographing jewelry and putting it up on eBay in 2004 when people laughed at jewelry on the Internet.

41:24So 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, 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 dime industry and open up and do anything. This is not 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.

42:05You 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, you know, computers. It's not my field. I dedicated myself to a field. So if anybody wants to dive into that field, your grandkid might do it, might do well. But you might have a hard time with it. I don't know. 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 Russia, maybe.

42:40But like, do you notice it in terms of actual like do Chinese people come in and buy more gold lately? No, not here particularly, but they might be buying it from someone else. I'd really love to ask my gold vendor Kahan is his name or Isaac is his name Kahan is the company and his father and his uncle put that together put a business together they went separate ways and he just inherited his father just retired when he was 80 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, 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 a variety of different people.

43:34I haven't seen a pattern. Okay. I haven't seen a pattern and I really haven't seen a rush of it 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. I've passed it. I've gave it. I've hid 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. How secure is your safe password? Is that just in your head?

44:15I guess you could always bust it open if you forget it right yeah i mean it's the security is about uh the cameras that are pointing at it and yeah there's a combination plus a key but listen you know i don't take my trays in and out every day i am uh i don't do any of that to be honest i have managers and 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 like this right the there's a lot of iron in the world and a lot of base metals and there's very little but rare 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 gold and metal is special and the universe creates them just like the universe creates gold um you look at the periodic chart you got to figure out where that came from that's up to you to decide wait I mean, actually, one last question.

45:14In Uncut Gems and Adam Sandler gave the stone to Kevin Garnett to hold for a while for good luck, would a jeweler ever do that? Yeah, anything can happen. I mean, you know, you might be doing a promotion and you might be putting diamonds on someone. That stressed me out so much, the thought of like, I'm just going to hit. The whole movie was stressful. It stresses me out too. Living it for 20 years has been stressful as well. So, yeah, you definitely give your gold and your jewelry and your watches to different people and you hope you find them at the end of the night where they're going to award shows.

45:47Oh, yeah, 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. Oh, that's smart. So, you know, this 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. Oh, my insurance company, they'll void me if I give out my stuff. Have insurance premiums been going up? 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.

46:27But better to have it and not use it. Does it go up in tandem with, like, the price of gold, though? No. Maksud Agajani, TraxNYC Thank you so much for coming on Adla Hey, thank you Thank you for giving me this golden opportunity Glad to have given you your start All those years We had to have at least one pun In the conversation No, that was fantastic, thank you so much That was a lot of fun

47:07That was fun, Tracy. It's always fun talking gold jewelry with Max. And yeah, I mean, I guess the investment thesis has borne out so far. Gold's done great. But I know it was kind of a joke, but I really do take this seriously, that at any time, no matter what the price of gold is, $100 worth of gold is always$100. 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 form, this is true, right? Well, I'll tell you what was interesting was the idea of like competition with the crypto. Yeah, that was really interesting.

47:46Because it did. I mean, as he was saying, it does sound like people are kind of, you know, it's sort of an either or. Yeah. To two, especially for like the people who want to like speculate on price. Right. Two 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. Because it makes sense. Why buy a cheap diamond or a low-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?

48:24And then the way that that filters through to the price overall. And I was just really interested in his comments on hiring and how difficult that is. Like I said, I had heard my barber said the same thing, just this core aspect of hiring people who are sort of with it, not seeking to get high per se. Interesting, interesting comments there. I'm sorry. Speaking of being a bad worker, I'm very distracted by it. I looked up the diamond-encrusted Furby. Oh, yeah. So how much is that going for? Well, so it got auctioned off by A24, the production company. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I'm trying to find how much it went for, but I can't find it at the moment.

49:02But I'm just staring at all these animated videos of the Diamond Furby. I might watch that movie again. Do you want to? I found it so stressful the first time. I don't think I could. It was really stressful. But, you know, I know how it ends now. So maybe that'll make it a little bit easier. here. There's some people are making imitation gold Furbies. I got to get one of those. Yeah, just get one of those. Okay. The bronze one. Shall we leave it there before I just start like narrating my online shopping? Yes, let's leave it there. Okay. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast.

49:37I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway. And I'm Jill Weisenthal. You can follow me at The Stalwart. Follow Maxoud Agajani. Check out his Instagram. It's TraxNYC. Follow our producers, Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman Armin, Dashiell Bennett at Dashbot, and Kale Brooks at Kale Brooks. Thank you to our producer, Moses Andam. For more OddLots content, go to Bloomberg.com slash OddLots. We have transcripts, a blog, and a newsletter. And you can chat about all of these topics 24-7 in our Discord, discord.gg slash OddLots. And if you enjoy OddLots, 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.

50:19And 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 listening.

50:56For enterprise organizations, managing all your food needs is a tall order. But with EasyCater, you get a single workplace food vendor with the tools and resources to make it easy. Giving teams across your organization an easy way to order from a huge variety of restaurants, all on one platform. All while consolidating your corporate food spend so you can control costs, streamline billing and payment, and simplify reporting. EasyCater, your business tool for food. To learn more, visit easycater.com slash podcast. This is Tom Keen inviting you to join me for the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. It's about making you smarter each and every business day.

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