➡ The article discusses the need for younger generations to invest in precious metals like gold and silver, but highlights the challenges they face due to lack of knowledge and resources. The author suggests creating a user-friendly platform, similar to Robin Hood, for buying bullion to encourage Gen Z and millennials to invest. The article also mentions the importance of educating these generations about the value and process of investing in precious metals. Lastly, it discusses the potential for price fluctuations and supply-demand shocks in the bullion market, and the need for a reliable platform for buying and selling bullion.

➡ A small team has created a website called bullionmash.com with the aim of helping people save money. The team welcomes feedback, inquiries, and potential listings from bullion dealers. They can be contacted via email at Mises@bullionmash.com. The website is free to use and is designed to be helpful for its users.

So Bullion Match is a project between three friends who just figured that, hey, something better has to be out there in terms of scanning the catalog of Bullion dealer items out there and figuring out what can be the best price for your buck, the best bank for your buck when you’re shopping for Bullion. Well, hello there, my friends. Chris Mark is here with you for Arcadia Economics. And again, Happy New Year as we’re already a week in and so far has been a good start to the year for gold and silver. Although fortunately, regardless of the pricing, I was quite fortunate to come in touch with LV Jadavji, a.k.a Ludwig von Mises, someone that I know many in our audience are quite familiar with.

And he’s a young entrepreneur that has seen a flaw or an area that could be improved in the Bullion industry. He’s gone out and done something about it. So a bit of a Robin Hood in my eyes and LV, it’s great to have you on here today. Happy New Year. And how are you, my friend? Great. Thank you, Chris. Happy New Year to you as well. Well, why don’t we dig right in? Because you have built a website that basically scans Bullion dealers. And if someone is looking to purchase a particular gold or silver item, you’ve done the legwork in a beautiful chrome extension that does all the homework for them.

And perhaps you could pull up the site and show people and tell people a little bit about what you’ve built here. Awesome. Looking forward to it. So I’ll share my screen here. So Bullion Match is a project between three friends who just figured that, hey, something better has to be out there in terms of scanning the catalog of Bullion dealer items out there and figuring out what can be the best price for your buck, the best bank for your buck when you’re shopping for Bullion. So we built one of the most extensive catalogs of Bullion on the net.

There are easily tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of SKUs available on our platform to analyze, filter, and research and so on. But this was just a preview to what eventually came out, which is our Bullion Match Chrome extension. So this Chrome extension allows you to shop for Bullion online. I’m on bullionmax.com right now, and I’m looking at one ounce American gold, Buffalo coins, and immediately in my browser, it’ll pop up an alert, which will show me that there’s a better deal available elsewhere on Pimbex. And I can click through to that and see that, yes, indeed, for a random year, Buffalo coin, I could save about 50 bucks by buying this one on Pimbex.

Similarly, I could go to BJSC and see that, hey, there’s a better deal available on Pimbex for this one ounce American silver coin. So really the benefit of using Bullion Match on your browser is that’s a really simple, non-invasive way to do a bunch of research comparing prices between dealers for essentially the same items. And this is really necessary we feel in the market because of a few things. Number one, you oftentimes need a lot of expertise to understand what is it like for comparison. So we kind of do that for you. The second piece is that dealers are always changing their premiums over spot, sometimes two to three times a day.

And in times of supply and demand shocks, you know, maybe every hour, you know, there’s, and we’re likely to have more of those supply and demand shocks in the future, we believe. And then a few other things around this would be that there’s just too much stuff out there for you to reasonably compare products between Bullion dealers in an efficient manner. You’re not going to go through like the Jane Bullion catalog, the Pimbex catalog, and the catalog of dozens of other dealers hoping you’re getting the best deal. We do that work for you. So that’s really the benefit of the Bullion Match Chrome extension, while we do have a site that supports it through its extensive catalog.

Yeah, and LV, I’m sure something that many people are already wondering, although perhaps we could talk about this, this is actually a free extension. There’s not a pay service, but this is something if someone was going and wanted to buy some gold or silver today. So you have copper in there too, but any of these things, they can use this, and this is a free extension that as long as they have Chrome or anyone doesn’t have Chrome downloads it that they can use an access. Is that right? Correct. Yeah, it’s a free extension. We’re not monetizing this yet.

This is just something me and my group of friends saw as needed in the world, and we put it out there. It’s a weekend project, if you will, and I do think that there could be some ways to monetize on the road by affiliates or even providing more tools to consumers or Bullion buyers in terms of portfolio management and maybe a marketplace to trade Bullion. But we don’t know yet. This is really a free resource to get people aware of us, and hopefully we save people a bunch of money as they’re adding Bullion to their cart.

Yeah, well, I think it’s a great approach as we were talking about before we hit the record button, but you saw a need in the marketplace and saw that it was something that you could fill and went out and did something about it. So I think this is a great service for any Bullion customer, and perhaps you could go back to the site again and maybe give us a bit more of a tour and show any of the other features that could be helpful for people when they get to the point if they are purchasing. Of course.

So if someone wants to do some original research on like, okay, I’m looking for, you know, American Silver Eagles or something of the like, it’s really easy to kind of compare across the catalog that we have. There’s all the filters around here so you can, you know, filter by weight, price range, the types. So, you know, instead of going through every individual dealer site, you can kind of search things here. But again, the Chrome extension, the value is you don’t even have to do that at this point, you know, you could just be browsing casually as you do today, or maybe you’re actively browsing looking for Bullion and, you know, will alert you in the browser as you’re shopping.

So it’s a more active, this would be a more active approach to using Bullion Match and the Chrome extension is a more passive approach. We think the passive approach will be more popular given there’s less work involved. But yeah, the other things I could highlight about this platform is we do gather a lot of data. So as you can see here, we’re actually tracking the price of this particular item and virtually every item on our site that we scrape on a daily basis. So you can see how prices and premiums are changing over time. We do use AI as well to write thorough descriptions of things.

We also have AI run comparisons between different products so that it’s more accurate and not, you know, rough on the edges. So, for example, we’ve been refining over time all these different corner cases that we can tackle. So, for example, you know, we’ll know whether something’s proof quality or not so that they’re more of a direct comparison between other proof quality items, which is something that would not have been as easy to do in the pre-AI age. So we’re using a lot of technology in the background to make the shopping experience for Bullion as seamless as possible.

And we’re really keen on having the most robust data set out there on how dealers are changing their premiums over time. So you can know that in the historical context, this is also a good purchase you’re making eventually. Yeah, well, I think that’s really fantastic, especially that you are incorporating AI into the gold and silver industry, which there’s pros and cons of gold and silver. I think especially the Bullion industry tends to be an older crowd, sometimes not the most well versed in incorporating new technology. And I think, A, that’s great that you’ve done it and created something that people will be able to benefit from.

And B, I’m just excited for you that I think that’s a great skill set to have. And as you continue to apply technology to gold and silver, I think that will work out quite well for you. And I know you also had that blog that talked about a few of the other things that as you’ve been a participant in the industry, you’ve seen areas that can be improved. And maybe you could talk about those for a little bit. Of course, yeah, this is really the background behind why we wanted this. First off, me and my group of friends were millennials.

And one of the first things we noticed when we became Bullion aficionados is that the resources available are definitely skewed towards older generations. And we don’t think that’s tenable. Like we are, you know, heading for maybe a currency crisis and we need to get as many young people involved in this world and accustomed to buying precious metals and investing in this category sooner than later. And I think the only way we can do that is by making sure that the resources available have a design language they’re accustomed to, that they’re easy to use. Like, where’s the Robin Hood for Bullion, if you will, right? And we’re trying to create that kind of experience so that Gen Z and millennials start adopting and buying Bullion en masse.

There has been some research that’s been quite interesting and promising as a trend. I think State Street has been tracking the allocation of the portfolio of millennials to gold and silver, at least in the double digits and growing. So there is some will out there for younger audiences to get on board here. But again, the resources need to be more in tune with what they need. And actually, LV, could I toss in a quick question there? I think that’s something that not just people watch, well, certainly just regular people who are investors watching at home as well.

But throughout the industry, that’s a question that comes up a lot. What do you find being an entrepreneur from that generation? What do you find is the general response to gold and silver, especially within the crypto crowd and especially a younger crowd? What do you find is the response there? And how do you get more people in there? Well, they’re very curious, but they have nowhere to start. That’s really what it is. So I talked to some friends who are not, let’s say, Bullion curious yet. They’re interested. They’re like, I should probably have some gold.

I should probably have some silver. But where do I start? They go to Bullion site. Do they go to a Bullion dealer in person? They don’t know what to buy. And I’ve had some friends force the issue and then end up buying a bunch of nimismatics for a high premium that didn’t have really good melt value or were not of proof quality. I’ve had some friends think that a hundred percent allocation of their portfolio to goldbacks is good on a melt value basis. But I explained to them like, hey, look, there’s not actually that much gold in these goldbacks.

So there’s various reasons why I think it is intimidating for younger audiences to get on board with this because on top of that, a lot of the resources online for these digital natives that they could use look like they are from the 90s. Early 2000s, there’s not been much adjustment in terms of making these things a good experience for the digital native crowd. Yeah. Well, I know what you mean and certainly explaining and making things easy to understand goes a long way. And perhaps maybe you can. Can you pull up the blog for a second? Because I was going to add some education, although, again, you’ve already got that in there.

And perhaps you could just walk through the topics you have listed in there already. For sure. Yeah. So this is some of these things we covered, but I’ll repeat some of them. So the first is there’s just way too many Boolean listings out there. And like I’ve shown you, you can easily save 50 bucks if you know where to shop. And we’ve definitely had some people use this plug in and get a Buffalo coin of the exact same year, exact same quality for $200 cheaper. Just by using our comparison shopping assistant. Right. The next thing is this is what we just talked about is you need expertise to be a smart bullion buyer.

And, you know, these millennials and Gen Z just aren’t at this point. This is completely novel to them. And they’re going to have to rush into this industry and start buying gold and silver soon before it’s too late. But there’s just so much education that they don’t have that older generations have. And somehow we have to we have to solve that gap. And we think billion matches on the tools to do that. Or at least, you know, bridge the gap between, you know, being naive about things and educated by providing a tool that figures that all out for you.

Right. And then the next thing is the price fluctuations, even on a regular basis between these dealers is quite frequent. So there’s a lot of pricey symmetry between dealers. But on top of that, they’re changing the premiums over spot several times a day. So, you know, it may be the case that you like have something in your car that’s a good deal. You think it’s a good deal after your comparison shop, you know, like later in the day, you know, the premium for some for some silver coin equivalent has been dropped to just a little bit above spot.

And that would have been a better deal. And you’re just not aware of that unless you have to like bullion match. And I think the fourth thing is something we’re headed towards is more supply and demand shocks. So we saw this during the silver squeeze a few years ago, but we’re probably likely to have many more of these. But to illustrate the point, there’s probably about two dealers that have a guaranteed supply from Asahi, which is a coveted refiner. And if you can imagine if there is a supply and demand shock, there’s going to be price swings are quite wild for something like an Asahi gold bar or silver bar.

And we’re going to see that I think across the board as people hordes of people just come into the bullion industry into the bullion market and start buying more and more. There might not be supply sometimes and dealers going to act spontaneously and maybe start changing their premiums every hour. And that’s going to be chaos. And that’s where bullion match is going to be even more useful. Yeah. Well, I think you’re quite right about that. And perhaps the last one I have for you is that in the past year and a half, I’ve seen a lot of retail selling.

Is that something you might be planning to address if people are looking for buyback prices? I see. So when you can you clarify the point, are you talking about retailers like Costco and Walmart selling bullion or? I mean, in terms of if some guy named John has bought some silver, he needs to sell some silver as a retail customer and is looking for where he could get the best bid on an item. I see. So I think that obviously eBay owns that market pretty solidly right now, but it’s not a perfect platform for this kind of industry.

It’s something my team has thought about a bit. I would say that’s quite the monster of a problem to go fix because of how much verification needs to be involved. The amount of scams out there is kind of ridiculous, right? Where you might have gold plated stuff or stuff that’s not good quality. And I think some of the major issues with some of these marketplaces like eBay is there’s very little recourse for a buyer when something does go wrong. Or even good recourse for a seller when something does go wrong. There’s one horror story I heard about someone selling something and then the buyer did something very nefarious, which is pretended that the bar never arrived or that the box was empty.

And that was all they needed to get back their $3,000 for their one ounce bar of silver or whatever it was. So that kind of stuff is quite rampant. And so whichever platform comes about to fix this problem in the bullion industry is going to have to be really rigorous on accountability between buyers and sellers, on testing. I think that stuff will come. It might be bullion mesh. It might be someone else that does this, but it is needed. And I think I get your point. There’s a lot of uncertainty when you’re buying and selling bullion, even when you’re not dealing with dealers.

Well, I hear you and just really nice to hear the way that you are looking at things and LV, perhaps just wrapping up. Can you show what the actual extension download page looks like? I think it’s right on top of that, but maybe you can scroll back up and the link to this is already right there in the description field below. So as you’re watching, go down and click on that now. And that’s what the page will look like when they click on that link. Exactly. We already have some great reviews. So I think this is worth using.

You could just add this to your Chrome browser and in about one click. Now, every time you go to a bullion dealer site, you’ll have useful insights to do some comparison shopping. A couple of things I’ll add is we have a smaller number of dealers now, about nine to ten. We’re adding about one a week. So we’ll be at about 50 or 60 in a few months here. And I would just highlight that, you know, this is definitely going to be useful to you right now. There are some corner cases working through. We’re a small team, but hopefully we can save you some money on day one.

And that’s our goal. Well, I really think that’s fantastic. And I congratulate you on what you’ve built here. And perhaps if there’s anyone who would like to contact you and has comments or things they’d like to discuss about the site or maybe bullion dealers who would like to be listed on the site or perhaps someone else out there who recognizes and appreciates what you’ve done here from an entrepreneurial standpoint. And anyway, how can people reach you if they’d like to get in touch? Of course. So that would be Mises at bullionmash.com. We all have different personas in the company that we adopt all from the Austrian School of Economics.

So we have a bomb. We have a Carl Menger. We have a Frederick Hayek. And we have a Ludwig von Mises. So that’s how we do things. Right on, my friend. Well, bullionmash.com is where you can find the site. And perhaps just in wrapping up, can you pull this site back up one last time so people will know exactly what it looks like on the homepage. Bullionmash.com. LV, thanks for joining us. I really appreciate that you’ve taken the time to build this. And I think it’s something free that is really useful. And hopefully everyone watching at home found that helpful too.

And we’ll look forward to catching up with you again soon and seeing how things are coming along. Thank you, Chris, for being on your show. Thank you. [tr:trw].

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