Hot Sauce Cannibalism Elephant Zits and Other Gold Silver Topics With Brian Kuszmar | Rafi Farber
Summary
Transcript
It’s probably when I said, coins are really hot and we’re doing really well with coins. It’s not the sales. We’re doing great with so much here in our store, the retail sales, it’s purchasing from the public, who’s needing money, you know, or from estates. Hey, guys. RAF here from the Endgame investor. And I got a special guest today, Brian Kuzmar of commercial real coins and precious metals in Fort Lauderdale. The circumstances that brought us together was actually, I think Brian had challenged anyone who believes that we’re going to be using physical silver coins in an endgame scenario.
Challenge to a debate. And, you know, we’re not really going to have a debate. We’re going to have a discussion. I’ll put my ideas forward, he’ll put his ideas forward. And we’re going to talk about the commercial coin market, how premiums work, stuff that Brian really knows about, that I know less about. And we’ll try to come up with some new ideas. And whatever we come up with, you’ll hear here. So, Brian, how are you and what’s going on in Fort Lauderdale? Very well, sir. And as you know, since you have been in Florida yourself, we’re in our 90 degree temperatures now, and it’s pretty damn hot out there.
But, you know, it’s like when you live up in the north, you just stay indoors or you wear shorts when you go outside. But other than that, yeah, it’s great. Business has been really good, and it’s just a big growing area, you know, this area, but, yeah, great. You said that business is really good. I see that premiums, physical premiums on gold and silver, if I’m not mistaken, are pretty low right now. First, let me preface, business has been good. Fortunately, I’m in the rare coin business as well. I do jewelry and artwork and other things, too.
That’s a whole different thing. But the coin business has been good. The bullion business has slacked off considerably over the last few years. I’ve seen, as a retail frontline soldier in the retail market with precious metals, I’ve seen a lot less buyers. A lot of my seasoned buyers aren’t coming in stacking, but I’ve got a couple of thoughts on that, why that’s happening, and we can get into that. Right after the entire financial collapse happened, I forgot what the price of silver was. But silver had dropped dramatically at four or $5 per ounce, or whatever it may be, or more.
All of a sudden, we were getting. The phones were ringing off the hook. People were looking to buy silver. They were worried banks were going to collapse, and, of course, so we were getting calls off the hook. Prior to that, it was kind of slow in the business. Brian, hold on. Can I stop for a second? You’re saying that the biggest demand for physical silver comes specifically during a financial collapse, when the spot price takes a dive. Fascinating. Yeah, that was my observation from being on the front lines with the retail public. Now, I don’t know what happens with trust funds and hedge funds and people that invest in gold or slb in that end, but in the retail public, yeah, we were slammed as soon as the price start, but the problem was the product just dried up off the shelf.
I remember at $10 silver or eight. Forget what it is. I’m sorry. My memory escapes me, but whatever it is, at that time, silver eagles were bringing five, six, seven at half the silver price. We recently seen it when they really shot up, but they were bringing eight to $10 over spot, minimum five. And you had to wait for delivery for two months. Hold on. I can find this chart, and I’ll try to find it for you, but it’s on gold charts R us. But at least from whatever feed that they’re getting from gold charts are also getting the record in premiums for junk silver and also for other coins, eagles, european, whatever it is, it happened in 2022.
Yes. Why? What was going on then? I think that that’s a good question. But the product. I mean, you know, what caused metal prices just to do what they did? I can’t say for sure at the time. I mean, but the product just dried up, Rafi. There was just no product available. When we called to get product, they were telling us the same thing that I saw in 2008 during that financial collapse. We were calling our wholesalers, and their wholesalers were saying, all right, if you want 1oz rounds or if you want 100 ounce bars, you know, we’re at a six week delivery.
We’re at eight week delivery, you know, and I saw 90%. I think the reason 90% got really high was because of that large order, supposed order out of Texas, if you remember. But that was the reason for the increase, some of that stuff. But I saw that the premiums just take off. And again, there was no product available. So I was telling customers, all right, after I sold my own inventory, you know, listen, if you want, you know, 1oz rounds or if you want hundred ounce bars, you know, it’s. It’s six weeks out. It’s five weeks out.
And here’s what the premium is. I don’t like it, but that’s what it is. The funny thing is though, the, it wasn’t greedy dealers or anything. It just wasn’t available. I mean, I’m not sure if that’s a good answer or not, but are you familiar with the silver squeeze movement and do you think that might have had an impact on it? As much as I love the silver squeeze, and I really do, I think it was great to have that kind of emphasis of, or attention and the amount of people that, that gathered. But, you know, I don’t think it had anything to do at all with.
And honestly, you know, my contention is that we as stackers really are a pimple on an elephant’s bum, to say it nicely. You know, we as physical stackers in coins and bars, we’re such a small segment of the gold and silver market. You know, the gold and silver market is primarily, as you know, derivatives and contracts and options. You know, that’s the real money. I mean, in the United States. I’d venture to say that, you know, stackers, when I say stack, most people’s exposure to gold and silver is with their, the guy that manages their trust fund or their investments, their 401.
Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, I understand. Us stackers are rare breeds. I mean, we are rare breeds. We’re, you know, I would venture to say we’re, we’re far less than 1% of the population of the United States that actually stacks gold and silver, and it’s probably even far less than that. Look, you’re right about that, but let me challenge you for a second. This has a little bit to do with our disagreement as to what’s going to happen when the dollar really collapses. Are we going to really pass around coins to each other? Is really going to be that? And I do think that’s going to happen for a short intermediate period of time.
You might not, but. So let me take what you said and filter through the way I think of things. So you said, yeah, we’re a pimple on an elephant’s ass, basically. But now if we reframe that, and I ask you the question this way, what percentage of the market are stackers of the physical gold and silver markets, not the derivatives? Again, that’s kind of where I was. I think I. There, I don’t believe there’s any data out there that we could go to. You know, how many Americans actually stack, you know, out of the 30, including jewelry, including everything that uses actual gold and actual silver inside? Oh, gold, yeah.
Yeah. Well, you know, as we know, with silver, the silver is heavily used in the, you know, so that would be large again, us coin and bar people, a pimple on the elephants. However, the real users of silver, we’ll talk about silver primarily is going to be industry as we know, you know, what is it? 0.6oz for every fuel burning car and 1.3 or 4oz for every. Okay, but okay, so let’s leave silver aside for a second because let’s just talk about gold. Because gold is much more strictly monetary than silver is. Silver is more industrial and has both uses.
So how much, what percentage of the market are stackers of gold compared to the physical gold market, excluding derivatives, compared gold to silver? No, no, silver bar gold. As people who buy actual physical gold and put it somewhere as a percentage of the entire physical gold industry. I think it’s the same. I think that people stack physical gold, they’re rarer than silver. I mean, on the numbers wise, people that come in buy gold from usually, you know, we get, you know, you know, coming on by 5100 ounces of gold, you know, your average glow around here, you know, and then you get your one ounces.
Guys, I seem to find that the wealthy people tend to seem to, you know, the wealthier people that I deal with seem to stack gold more than anything. You know, they’ll come and they’ll drop, you know, 5100 ounces or whatever it is at a time as, whereas I see the working class, working class and middle class folks out there seem to stack silver more. I would say that the numbers on gold are much higher because gold is much more expensive than silver. But we probably have a lot less gold customers than silver customers. And on the whole, I don’t think there’s a lot, again, people that really physically own and hold gold and silver coins.
I think we’re just a rare breed out there. And I think you’re absolutely right that, you know, you know, when it comes to holding this stuff, I mean, it’s essential, you know, I can’t see why anybody would buy gold and silver and let someone else store it for me. It’s just beyond me. Unless you were at that such wealth level that holding that much amount of gold would require you to build your own vault, you know what I mean? But for the average Joe, I just don’t understand why they don’t own physical. And the average Joe out there, you know, I talked to the guy that my trainer who I worked with for years now, you know, I got a little silver.
I think my guy has me an SLB or something. But, you know, I’ve talked to them about buying physical gold and silver, but, you know, I don’t know. Again, I think you and I and the stackers that you talk about and the gold and silver people, we are a very rare breed up there. We really are. We know that prior to, let’s say, let’s go back to the 19th century, like, when people actually traded around silver coins, less so gold. But like, you know, they trade around silver coins on retail levels. They use this stuff. I mean, yes, on a general basis, it was a normal thing back then.
What would you say the. I mean, you could define all those people who use silver in an average transaction. 19th century, going to a grocery store or whatever, handing the grocer your silver coins and getting your food, whatever it is. What percentage of silver you could call everyone stackers was, was actually coins versus anything else. Well, you know, I think there’s a big difference between then and now when it comes to, you know, the generation. You know, my grandfather, my father and my grandfather’s generation prior to them, handled dimes, quarters and halves, silver coinage on a daily basis.
It was just what we dealt in and it was part of the daily trade. I mean, so then by default, everyone is a stacker because everyone needs to earn money and the money is the silver. I agree. Everyone with a stacker then. So, yeah, I would say that. I mean, if you look at it from that point, yeah, the whole country were silver stackers. We were a million strong of silver stackers. That’s what our money was. But it’s not anymore, obviously. And one of the things you and I, or I don’t know if we discussed this, but I’ve discussed it with a couple folks, well, using this for money now, and, you know, I have sold a lot of 90% to a lot of people that felt that they’re going to be using this on a barter basis and a trade basis.
And I believe 100% that it really depends on where you live. You know, I’m a firm believer that knowing the population in my area, and the other thing too, is the new generation and the 99% of people that are not stackers, they have not a clue what a real silver quarter looks like. And here’s where I’m going with that on a silver quarter. Again, my father and my grandfather and their generation handled it every day. I mean, they could probably smell what a fake one looked like or something was off on it, just like, just like a ten year old today could probably tell a crappy counterfeit, because they handle it every day.
When you handle something every day, you become familiar with it in every way. I mean, when I tell you that, I can probably close my eyes and almost tell you from the feel of a coin whether it’s real or not, a gold or silver, that kind of thing, I probably can. All right. But that’s just familiarity with the product. And I think for generations, you know, again, our father’s generations, they handled it every day. They knew. What I think the problem now with that is that if I tried to trade it with other people, they wouldn’t know, you know, what it was.
I mean, I think a challenge would be, is to walk in with a gold coin and offer to pay the proprietor with it. And they’d probably look at it. It’s got to be fake or I don’t know how to tell, you know what I’m saying? So that would be my only thing with bartering is that the population, maybe in rural areas and areas where you’ve got people that are familiar with that or generation that knows what it looks like, but these young folks out there, they’re not going to take that and change from me. They’re not going to.
I don’t think they would. I just don’t think they understand it or familiar with it. Right. They don’t. They don’t. And now if you want to transition to that topic. Yes. So, like, my point with that is this, like the guy behind me in this book, right? That’s Ludwig von Mises. Okay. And he came up with the monetary regression, you call it monetary regression theorem. Monetary regression principle. Libertarian since the eighties. Right. Okay. So, so my argument is, and it’s really an extension of mises argument, is that all the prices that we have now, which are basically price and derivative bullshit, everything is derivatives and everything is contracts and everything is.
But they’re denominated in this thing called dollars, which originally was born out of a substitute for gold and silver, which was then stolen by FDR, and all the things that happened in the thirties and forties, etcetera. But all the prices that we have now, they go back in time. Everything stretches back in time to an original price array because you can’t, just like you can’t determine prices, you can’t control prices. You can try and it’ll create shortages or surpluses or it’ll mess up markets, but you can’t just determine what the price is of everything. It always has to go back into the past.
So my point is that once, if we’re going into the street and nobody can use a dollar in a hyperinflationary situation, which is the end of all fiat currencies and has been for all of history. And there’s no reason that the dollar shouldn’t be an exception. We can argue about whether it’s going to happen tomorrow, ten years from now, or at some point, but I think we can agree that at some point it’s going to happen. Then you try to take a wad of dollars, whether they’re digital or physical or whatever, to a store and buy something and you can’t do it.
There’s no other choice than to go back to silver coins. There’s nothing else to go back to because everything is based on that originally. So my, my point is that at some point we’re going to be trading these coins. And I understand, I get your point that people, kids today, 20 year olds, 30 year olds, even my generation doesn’t know how to check it. But then, then again, I could use the argument like, you know, everyone loses their virginity at some point and they figure out what to do, right? Because we’re humans and that’s what we do.
Even though maybe we don’t know, like, even though, like in ultra orthodox neighborhoods where I live in Israel, like, you know, they don’t, they know nothing about the opposite sex, but they figure it out. Why? Because they’re humans. So same thing. In an economic sense, maybe they don’t know what gold and silver coins are. They don’t know how to handle them. You don’t know how to handle a woman either when you’re, you just married, whatever, but it’s, but you figured out, you figure it out. And again, I would 100% agree with that. You know, if, if that was the option in the situation where you had to learn something.
You know, humans do adapt to some point. We all adapt. Some of us do adapt or die, right? Yeah. And, yeah, that’s a good example of that. That’s, you know, but, you know, as far as just the population around here, I mean, you know, I live in south Florida, you know, and, you know, going through your first major hurricane down here, you know, living through no power for weeks and, you know, no grocery stores. No. This is your first hurricane. How long have you been down? Oh, no, back in, my first hurricane was back in the nineties with the Andrew who.
Mine too. Mine too. I was a kid. Yeah, that was a bad one, man. That destroyed. I mean, if you remember, it just leveled entire areas. Yeah, I was, I was afraid for my life, I remember the sounds looked like a war zone. And as you remember, food, water, I mean, that’s basic survival right there. So when you talk about these things, I’m 100% with you. I mean, I think that our infrastructure, you know, our power infrastructure, our food infrastructure is so, so, I mean, at any given time, you know what I’m saying? That could just be disrupted.
And, and I think if you live in North Carolina or South Carolina or someplace, you know, where you’ve got communities and you don’t have, you know, you’re not sitting in the middle of a, you know, 50 square mile with a million .2 people, you know what I’m saying? That concerns me because I do live in an area like that, and I think about that. Well, what would happen in that kind of scenario, you know, and I don’t know. To me, it’s too scary to think about here in this particular area. Of course, a lot of people I know down here are moving up and buying properties up in Carolinas and central Florida where there’s not a population.
They can grow some food and not worry about roving bands. But, man, we have roving bands of kids driving through neighborhoods here on illegal motorcycles. Cops don’t do anything about it. The erosion of your, your, your erosion of law and being able to uphold the law is, you know, I mean, I’m in my sixties, you know what I’m saying? And I just kind of see what you’re talking about. End times, I can’t argue with that at all. But what’s the solution? I mean, for me? I’ve got stored food. You’re part of the solution. The solution is you.
Because, look, if you think about, think about it this way, okay? This is the way to, this is the way that I categorize in my brain. So when we’re talking about the breakdown of law and order, we’re really talking about a situation where the police can’t be paid because there’s no money to do it, and so they don’t want to do it. And so everybody wakes up in the morning. The reason that we are a society, that we don’t eat each other and shoot each other and kill each other is that I basically know where I fit into the division of labor.
I know what I’m going to do tomorrow, and I know how much money I have to earn, how much money I have to spend. Basically, it’s all like, I get it. It changes a little bit every day. But there’s a continuum that goes back. So I know I don’t have to kill anybody to eat. Okay. But the problem, though, is that all these derivatives that we talked about, that everything is based on derivatives. Nobody knows what a coin is. This is all fake, okay? It’s going to fall. And when it falls, and people have today $100,000 in their brokerage account, $10,000 in their bank account.
And then all of a sudden they realize that they have nothing. Then they don’t fit into the division of labor anymore. And it breaks down. The solution to that is people like you and people like me who are busy distributing real money to people. And the thesis is that the more people that have real money before this whole thing falls, the easier the division of labor will be to be rebuilt from the bottom up. So the more people you can distribute coins to, not necessarily the more you can sell. Because if the same guy is buying, it’s not really going to help much.
But the more people you can influence, the more people that have silver coins or some kind of silver or gold, then they will still be able to fit into some kind of division related with real money. Once the dollar goes kaput. And then you have a better chance of not getting into a zombie apocalypse. I agree with that, Rafi. But even more important, I think, than actually spreading silver and gold around is things like you do and other guys do. You plant the seeds out there. I mean, you have a great. I try to explain why you sell the products.
Yeah, I sell product. But, you know, in my videos, I mean, I do. I explain why. I mean, that’s whole part of the process. Someone feel comfortable with what they’re buying. Why am I buying this? What reasons am I buying this? And you and I fall on the same lines. I mean, the challenge I put out there with that we were talking about earlier is I don’t think anyone’s ever going to use 90. You know, I thought about it afterwards and I said, that’s an absolute statement. That’s not correct. That is an absolute statement on my part.
And I was incorrect for saying that. And you caught that as well. But as far as. For my particular instance, when you said eating, you know, my joke with people is, well, what’s your plan for. What’s your plan in your area, Brian, for an apocalyptic where there’s no food or anything? And I said, hot sauce. I said, what’s hot sauce? To make my neighbors more palatable. A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti. That’s my first, you know, that’s personal. I didn’t know if it was, I should say that or not, but that kind of jokingly, but in a weird kind of jokingly way, you know, what I’m saying is that in major suburban areas, I mean, I can’t see how that any kind of trade is gonna work.
I mean, I think in the scenario you’re talking about the end game, I need to be out of here, you know what I mean? I need to be out of my area. I need to be out of the major cities that I’m in here, because I don’t. I believe that I would either be robbed or killed or eaten, you know what I’m saying? In that kind of environment where, you know, and I’m not going to give them the hot sauce to do it either. But again, my statement, whether we’re going to be using this or not in the future, I think, really is depending on where you live, what region you are, what kind of population you have.
I mean, jeepers. Do you think that silver coins would help us if we lived in Chicago? Probably not. You know what I mean? They’d probably steal our. You know. So I think it’s really dependent on where you are. And if I. And again, for me, what would be part of my, obviously, silver and gold coins? I’m going to take that with me if I’ve got to flee somewhere, I’m going to have food with me. Ammo, obviously, and my hot sauce. But silver, gold, lead and hot sauce. Okay. Yeah. It’s a good quadrapecta, they call it. Yeah, I don’t.
I don’t think silver and gold will help you that much in Chicago, especially the south side or any of these big cities. That’s one of the things I tell people who watch me, like, you know, okay, good. Get gold and silver, but, like, get out of the big cities. Get out of the. Now. Yeah. You know, where would you. I mean, people, people don’t criticize me, but they, they are, they comment like, rafi gad of northern Israel, you’re being bombed. There’s Hezbollah to the north, and, like, you’re going to be overrun. And, like, there’s nothing going on here.
There’s a few rockets. Yeah, that’s true. But then again, the people to the north of me have no money. Like, Lebanon doesn’t even have a currency anymore. And the ones that feed them, the ones that feed Hezbollah, Iran, they don’t have a currency either. What are they all using then? They’re using dollars. Yeah. That’s what they’re doing, what’s funding all the bombs that are hitting my, that are, that are flying over my head and hitting my neighborhood dollars. It’s all american money that they spread everywhere. They just like crap, all their inflation everywhere and it ends up bombing everybody.
So we have to like how do we destroy that? We buy gold and silver because what does the dollar rest on? It rests on a foundation of gold and silver. And that’s why the introduction to my videos is hacking away at that base. And I buy gold and silver, not necessarily to protect my family, which it does, but that’s not why I do it, because every coin that I get, even if it’s a dime, I know that that thing was going to be at the base of the pyramid that supports the inflationary system of the US dollar that is causing all this war and mayhem and craziness and I want it to end.
And I think at the very worst it’s a hedge. It’s a hedge against all this stuff and that’s exactly what it is. Gold and silver is a hedge against, a hedge against war is a hedge against the falling dollar. I mean it’s been around for 5000 years, not gone bankrupt yet. And I don’t think it’s going to. So, you know, I don’t think there’s really any disagreement with us at all when it comes to the inside. You know, I think we’re pretty much spot on. My only thing is, just given where I live in my circumstances here, I would really, I just couldn’t see it happening around here.
But on the other hand too, once the dust has settled, there’s got to be some form of trade. And I think gold and silver is here forever. No matter what happens. Even if they reinvent the dollar somehow, digital, whatever it may be, I think gold and silver is here going to outlast every empire, continue on from here on out. So yeah, it’s going to be the base of the next derivative system that we create. There’s always a derivative system. It’s always going to be created because it’s just more convenient to trade derivatives of gold and silver than to trade gold and silver around.
But if the derivatives don’t work, you have no choice but to trade the actual stuff. Yeah, it’s security. It’s security and it’s proven itself. For 5000 years. It’s outlived all empires, all currencies. It’s, you know, it is the king of, the king of money. Gold and, and silver. I’ll throw silver in there. Although silver used more for industry. Which brings. Begs the question is that with mines not operating like they used to. And I mean, what bugs the hell out of me all these years, Rafi, is that I’m not seeing retail capitulation. I’m not just not seeing it.
I’m a small entity as a small dealer. I’m not on the scale of the big wholesalers. But we’ve done multi, multi millions of dollars and we have customers who drop millions of dollars as well here. But I’ve not seen in even from 2011 and twelve and I remember a lot of these customers, I have not seen them capitulate. I watched. What do you mean, like Matt? Like sell their stacks back to you? Oh, they’re silver. The only people I see. No, I hear a lot of people out there. Oh, my local dealer says they’re doing nothing but selling, you know, and you know, they’re not really selling much.
Customers are selling them and they’re doing more buying than selling. But I can tell you that living in the area that I do, wealthy area that I do. And you know, we also have our working class here as you know, you know, so it’s kind of Florida has a good, you know, mix of economic, social. You know, that the only capitulation I have seen in silver on the retail buyers is people that when I go down there and say, what are you doing? I said I don’t want to sell. I got to pay my bills. And the big deals that I’ve sold, you know, the tens of thousands of ounces to individual customers and hundred ounce gold deal pluses to these people, I’m not seeing one of them come in and I’m going to be the guy they’re going to sell to.
So. Which tells me they’re not nervous. But when I see the prices of silver go down a lot and gold go down a lot, you know, the first thought that most people have is, well, there goes all the investors taking their coins and bars into the coin shops. It has nothing to do with that. Like you said, it’s derivative driven. It’s completely driven by derivatives. As you know, I’m a big fan of tedinous butler who passed away recently as well. And you know, the entire gold and silver market, there were silver market, not gold. But Ted always, he always said that silver market was controlled by a cartel or three or four big bullion banks and they would collusively work these things together.
But I just hope someone can pick up the work that that man did for many years. Again, I think if it’s controlled by, you know, three or four banks and that might be true. Imagine what happens when one of them gets desperate. Imagine what happens at the price of silver when four pillars or two of them fall, or if one of them falls, the rest of them fall. On that, I wanted to ask you, my thesis is that what’s going to be the endgame bell? What am I going to say? I’m going to get on YouTube or whatever my channel is and say, guys, this is the end game.
It’s here right now. How will I know that? And what I say is gold and silver going to go to a 15 to one? Somewhere around 15 to one, because that’s the historical monetary ratio since like the 17 hundreds. Isn’t that the geological ratio too? The geological ratio? I think geological ratio is like ten to one. But I could be wrong with that. I’m not a geologist. But the monetary ratio, assuming gold and silver are both freely traded monetarily and there are no derivatives to speak of, you have a 15 to one ratio. And that happened.
That happened in 1980. It did happen. It also happened in 1968. It happened in 1919. Right. So I think we’re going to go back there one more time and once we go back there one more time, that’s going to. That’s when the derivatives are dead. Do you think we can get to a 15 to one ratio? We got to 30 to 120. Eleven. Do you see that as even possible? Is that happening? Absolutely, I do, I do. I think once things start to let loose, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And I’m not quite sure what’s going to drive it, you know? You know, I think the 1980 market was really driven by retail people, you know what I’m saying? Gold and silver markets.
I mean, do you think the whole hunt story is like an embellished myth? No. The Hunt brothers, you know, here’s my take on the hunt brothers. I believe the hunt brothers did everything by the book. They followed the rules and the casino changed the rules on them. My understanding that the hunt brothers went out there and, you know, obviously they bought all these contracts and they demanded delivery on contracts after going up and buying all the available silver that the contracts would use to fulfill their contracts and they asked delivery. But my understanding is that the casino changed.
You know, the casino Comex and I called it casino, you know, they can make the rules or whatever, but my understanding is that the Hunt brothers had their loans called in, loans they were using to make these deals, had that the banks that they were hurting had their loans called. And that’s the backstory I heard. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that the Hunt brothers were really taken out and that the casino said no more. You know what I mean? I don’t believe that brothers did anything illegal whatsoever. Yeah, so. Well, that’s exactly what happened in March 2022 with nickel.
Right. There was this whole nickel explosion. Yeah. And then the lme just reversed trades and ripped people off of hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, yeah, they’re gonna. They’re gonna change the rules. I don’t deny they’re gonna change the rules. Of course they’re gonna change the rules. The question is, once they change the rules, are people gonna accept dollars anymore? One time, at one point, they’re gonna change the rules. And we’re gonna say, okay, you’re gonna change the rules, and scroll. These derivatives, scroll this derivative crap doesn’t matter anymore. I’m gonna go to the physical because nothing else to use.
So, fine, let them change the rules. But then you can change the rules so many times until people stop taping, taking the paper that you’re trying to save. Yeah, well, I think the biggest danger to gold markets particularly, is digital currency as well. I mean, to that transition, you know, going to people looking at gold and silver. You know, I think, again, that I’m about to jump down another rabbit hole here. So you got to stop me from doing that. There’s enough rabbit holes to jump to everything. You can’t walk anywhere without falling down one these days.
I know. I know, man. So, what, did I not answer, sir? No, I think this is good. So, we got 45 minutes. I think that’s cool. Do you want to tell us a little bit about your shop? Anyone who’s in your neighborhood, if you’ve got an online option, people want to order from you. Where can we find it? My store is located, again, commercial boulevard, Lauderdale, by the sea. I’ve been in this location since 1995. I started in this business, 77, 2nd generation. I really know my stuff. And I’m a pretty competitive guy. And the reason I’m not bigger than I am is because I’ve never been money motivated, unfortunately.
But I enjoy my business and more so I enjoy my customers, actually, more than I enjoy my business, as strange as that sounds. But that’s not. You know, we’re not here to talk about that. But, yeah, we’re open 10:00 to four Mondays through Fridays. I do not have a website. I’m really a brick and mortar store. You know, there’s a lot of advantages to a brick and mortar store coming in and talk. I mean, buying online. I mean, if you had. If you had a friend of yours that said, hey, Rafi, I’m in Fort Lauderdale and I’m going to buy some gold.
You know, should I buy from SD or should I go over to providing on competitive, or should I go over and see Brian? I think you’d say, go see Brian. He’ll talk to you. You know what I mean? You’re not going to get that from. I’m not. Again, I advertise to beat these guys, these big guys out there. And I can’t. On a small level, I can cut their premiums. I cut them in half. I don’t mind if I got to work for $0.25 an ounce, I will, just to be competitive. And I’m on nowhere level near SD at Max, JM, Andy and those guys.
You know what I’m saying? As far as having an online service, I don’t know if Andy’s got an online service, but I’m highly competitive and. Wait, you mean Andy Shekman? Yeah. Yeah, Andy. I don’t think Andy has a website. Does he? Does he have a website where you can. Yeah, of course. I’m an affiliate of miles. If you live anywhere near Lauderdale by the sea or in south Florida, then by all means, go to Brian’s store and buy with him. But if you don’t and you live anywhere else in the United States of America, then check out Miles Franklin’s weekly specials.
Milesfranklin.com we have junk silver half dollars only $2.50 over spot. 2024 silver. UK Britannia’s 1oz. 329 overspot 1oz gold. Canadian maple Leafs only $65 over spot and one 10th ounce gold. American Eagles only $39 over melt. Call 855 game end. That’s 855 game end, not endgame, game end or email endgame investor@milesfranklin.com and support this channel. Once you have your gold and silver, whether it’s with Brian Kuzmardeh or with Andy Sheffman and Miles Franklin, you can go get a dirty man safe and use code endgame ten at checkout for 10% off and store some of your gold and silver there, as well as a conventional safe or wherever you think is the safest for you to store it.
Diversity in storage is key. He’s down my way some way. I’d like to meet him someday. He seems like a really nice guy. And we have a mutual friend that says he’s a super nice guy. I mean, I’m sure he is, but I’m very competitive. I will say that I’ll beat all these guys. If you give me an individual deal, I’ll go out and beat them. I’m getting later in years. I’m starting to become more money orientated because I realize it ain’t going to be no Social Security for me. It took me a while to figure that out.
You said that the bullion business is down, but the rare coins business is up. Why the hell is that? How does that make any sense? It’s an enigma to me here, I can tell you this for sure, is the coin. It’s a hobby. It has nothing to do with, you know, it’s primarily a hobby first, all right? You know, stamp hobbies and stamps, a hobby, but you don’t see stamp shops anymore. The one good thing that the coin industry did, and my father was, ran major shows as well. My father ran one of the big major shows in the country.
But one of the things that, and my father started the program was to get kids involved in the hobby. You see where I’m coming from on this is that a lot of, a lot of industries, the stamp industry and a lot of these industries that did not get kids involved with the industry. Therefore, 20, 30, 40 years later, you go to shows and you go to the hobbies and it’s nothing but 70, 80 year old guys, no young kids running around. So one of the beautiful things that I think that my industry, the rare coin industry, one of my industries did was the introduction of getting kids involved with the hobby, giving them coins, starting programs for them.
And you know, it’s funny too, because kids are natural collectors to some degree. And so, I mean, honestly, that’s why I think the coin business is so good still now. I mean, there’s coins selling for multi millions and millions of dollars. I’m not sure what the most expensive coin is now, but it’s probably up in the high millions. And that’s the only reason I can explain it. You know, the expensive stuff will always sell, just like expensive art will always sell, and the cheap coins always sell because it’s like mashed potatoes. It’s comfort food for hobbyists.
You know what I’m saying? So the coin industry has done pretty well. But when I say I’m doing well with coins right now, it’s not so much the sales, it’s the purchasing of sales. And when the times start getting tough, coin collections start to go. And also we’ve got generations wait, I don’t understand what you meant. It’s not the sales, it’s the purchasing of what I buy a lot of collections, so, you know, make money when we purchase stuff as well. You know, we’re working below the bids and, you know, on the ass. So, you know, it’s probably when I said, coins are really hot, and we’re doing really well with coins.
It’s not the sales. We’re doing great with so much here in our store. The retail sales, it’s purchasing from the public who’s needing money, you know, or from estates, you know, for grandpa diamond. Wouldn’t you have to resell those in order to make a profit? We do, but my, my, my sales model is I don’t sell retail. I end up putting the stuff in auctions and let them take care of the retail or the selling side of that. So I’ll go out and buy a collection, and then I’ll take it. And I don’t put it in the store and staple it up and have customers come in and say, I gave you dollar nine for that one, or 901,000.
So what do you do with that? I wholesale the stuff out to other dealers who specialize this to retail it. So my business model here is, I mean, if customer comes in and wants to buy rare coins from us, I’ll sell them rare coins. But I have not developed a retail market for it. So our primary business, when I’m buying coins, when I say I’m doing really well with coins right now, it’s not so much the sales of the coins, but the amount of collections that we’re buying. And then we’re reselling to other dealers who have a retail environment for those items.
That explains a lot. So that tells me that we are in the midst of some kind of a dollar crunch, or at least the beginnings of one, because people are selling their gold and silver art collection. I call it numismatic. I call it. It’s a gold and silver art collection. These rare coins, they are art that happen to be made out of gold and silver. That’s what it is. You’re absolutely correct on that. And I am seeing more of that. But again, on the other side of that, too, we do buy a lot of estates. Again, grandpa passes away, and we’re known for being very fair, and we buy a lot of coin collections.
Hey, my grandpa passed away. I want to sell the collection. I have no interest in it. Remember, it’s not gold or silver, like stacking. It’s a hobby. So a lot of the people that inherit these collections have no desire to continue the hobby. You know what I’m saying? However, be happy with me is that if it is primarily gold and silver, I try my best to convince them to hold on to it. So, you know, hang on to that stuff. It’s not collectible. You’re going to just make money in the future. And I know even if you don’t sell it to me today, you’ll remember me later and you’ll come back and sell at a higher price.
So I do try to get people to keep that stuff, you know, so. Okay, so now it all fits together. There is a lull in the market, and you’re doing well on the. On the other side of the dollar crunch, which is why, you know, that gold and silver retail shops or coin shops like yours are great for any economic environment, for the boom. When people. When people want bullion in there and they’re even the bus or whatever, like, people always either. They’re either selling to you or buying from you in whatever economic environment, and, you know, it works well.
Yeah, I make a two way market on all this stuff. So, fortunately for me, I’m not shoehorned into just one industry or one thing. And I got to tell you, based on how bad I’ve seen the bullion business over the last year and a half, then this is just speculation on my part. Unless some of these big bullion companies do something different. I don’t think so. I think we might see, you know what I’m saying? Or unless the market changes dramatically. I’m waiting to see one of the big guys fall out there because the sales just aren’t there.
You know what I’m saying? But that’s just speculation on my part, and that’s industry speculation on my part, as far as I think you’d be interested to know. And I know how you feel about the 2020 closures because I feel the exact same way. And what happened then? I stayed open. I stayed open. I stood outside my front door. And when they drove by, well, they know me. I have an attitude. So they knew not coming screw with me. But they had strict. All the businesses were closed. And I got letters closed down. I did not close closed.
I kept open, kept. I kept my neon sign open, and I made sure that I was available to people during that. And I got to tell you, I’m glad I did. You know how many people came in that had no money? I had little old ladies crying, trying to pay their mortgages at the time. I had. I still get that. But when you’re talking about two way market, you know what I mean? I may not be selling, but I’m buying. But during the financial crisis, I helped people. Really. I stayed open, and I helped people get by, you know what I mean? And I got.
I wouldn’t close anyway, bastards of what they did to this country and the rest of the world. But you’re in Florida. Florida, where it was that. Where it was the least bad. I mean, Ron DeSantis proved to be not so bad, and he stopped the lockdowns after, what, two or three weeks. How long were the lockdowns in Florida? Not that long. It wasn’t that long, but it was longer than two or three weeks. I pretty much remember because I was thinking, like, all right, you know, maybe I’ll go take my boat out and do some more fishing.
And I call my marina. They’re closed by the mandate from the county commissioners. You know who I found out was more powerful than anyone in the United States is commissioners and these little unelected mother effers. I’m sorry, the deep state. Deep state, yeah, the little petty clerk. The bureaucracy. The unelected. The bureaucracy. And that’s what. That’s my interpretation of the deep state. But again, here we go. I’m jumping down rabbit hole. I’m sorry, but I. I stayed open during that period, and I’m glad I did. I kind of defied the local authorities here, and I remember they closed the beaches down here, too.
I have a friend of mine that’s a hardcore libertarian mises guy, and he actually got arrested for Dorman. They wrote him a summons, but they ended up releasing the summons, and I’m the one that told him I was going to go do it, and he did it. And I went down here, and one of the deputy guys was a buddy of mine. He said, brian, please don’t do this to me. Well, I was arrested twice in Israel during 2020, once in 2020, once in 2021. The first time I was arrested, I was walking by myself in the industrial zone, picking up my car.
Nobody around me. I didn’t have a mask on, and I got picked up into a police car. They took me to the police station. They told me to put a mask on. I said, there’s no way in hell I’m putting a mask on. Screw you people. And they kept trying to put it on me, and I was like, just leave me alone. And then eventually, they just let me go. And the second time I got arrested, I got arrested for dropping my daughter off at her kindergarten without a mask and without a green pass. And I sat down to play with her.
And then police showed up at my door a few hours later. And confiscated my weapon and put me into questioning. I got out about an hour before the Sabbath. And was able to have dinner with my family, thank God. And now we’re in a court case against the city. And against the woman who called the police on me. That’s crazy. I mean, well, it’s crazy times, that’s for sure. Yeah, well, screw them all. Screw them all. Gold and silver will stand in the end. And you know what? Guys like you. Nightmare will be over guys like you, Rafi.
You plant the seed out there. And that’s the way I’ve always looked at what I do when I talk to people. You know, you plant seeds, and that’s what you’ve done. I mean, basically, I watch your videos, and I’ve seen what you’ve done out there. You plant seeds, and those seeds grow. You know what I mean? You may not always see the fruition or the fruit. But what’s more important, seeing the fruit or planting the seed? And you plant the seed, sir. Well, thank you. That’s what I’m trying to do. And I appreciate you coming on.
And, you know, eventually we’ll talk again and we’ll see how close we are to the end game. Next time, if you need anything, questions in my industry, never hesitate to call me. I’m an open book for you. Okay? Okay. I’ll do so. Thank you very much. Stay safe. And thanks, brother. All right.
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