Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - We Buy Gold Business Model Explained: Why This Deal Is Risky

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

In this episode, the hosts dissect a high-revenue, fast-scaling precious metals buyer that might be both a goldmine and a landmine—complete with potential regulatory issues, cash-heavy operations, and lending red flags.Business Listing - https://dashboard.dealforce.com/deals/profiles/Profile69159.pdfWelcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.Looking to build a professional website in minutes? Try Wix: https://wix.pxf.io/c/6898629/3115214/25616?trafcat=templateHubSpot is the backbone for how businesses scale without chaos. Try them out here: https://go.try-hubspot.com/OeG9Vr💰 Sponsored by:Capital Pad – A platform connecting accredited investors with vetted small business acquisition deals. Discover exclusive opportunities at https://capitalpad.comAcquisition Lab – Your fast-track to business ownership. Get hands-on support, world-class resources, and join a top-tier community of acquisition entrepreneurs. Schedule your free consultation at https://www.acquisitionlab.com and mention Acquisitions Anonymous!The hosts dive into a fascinating Generational Equity listing: a $41M revenue precious metals buyer with projected $6M EBITDA for 2025. With over 15 years in operation and locations across the Eastern U.S., the business buys gold, silver, coins, diamonds, and more directly from consumers, then flips those assets to refineries, retailers, or via eBay. Their proprietary ERP and X-ray fluorescence tech help optimize resale and manage inventory—but the model relies heavily on market prices and velocity.Key Highlights:- Projected 2025 Revenue: $41M; Projected EBITDA: $6M (15% margin)- Operates consumer-facing storefronts buying and flipping precious metals- Uses proprietary ERP and X-ray fluorescence tech for pricing and inventory- Regulatory red flags, cash-heavy business, possible money laundering risks- SBA financing unlikely; creative deal structure or all-equity requiredSubscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous. Michael here. Today's deal was a super fun one. We had five of us talking about this deal, which, as you could guess, means we go a little bit longer. But we dug really into a fun one. They think you enjoy it. It was a big company that buys gold.

So stick around for the whole episode. You'll see what we thought about it. And I think you'll be surprised where we ended up on this one. I was. All right. Here's the episode. Acquisitions Anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous.

We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory line. Hey, everyone, it's Bill. And I want to tell you about maybe the most exciting sponsor we've had in a long time on the pod. It's called CapitalPad. And it is the thing that I wish existed when I started my journey of operating and investing in small businesses. So CapitalPad is a marketplace for acquisition entrepreneurs that is people who want to buy a business and need capital to list their deals. solicit capital from other people who want to invest in acquisition deals. So if you want to back

somebody buying a small business, CapitalPad is a place to do it. And if you want to buy a business and need capital, you can go on CapitalPad to be introduced to investors. So the really great thing, too, from the investor side is that CapitalPad takes care of all of the details that can get hairy with small business acquisitions. They handle standardized terms, standardized governance, standardized distributions all up front in black and white. Basically, CapitalPad professionalizes investing in small businesses. And the returns can be really, really good. I'm so stoked that they exist. It's founded by my friend Travis, who is a phenomenal entrepreneur in his own right. So if this sounds like something that is appealing to you, if you want to buy a small business

and need capital, or if you want to invest in small businesses, go check out Capitalpad.com and tell them that Acquisitions Anonymous sent you. I would rather it that way. So who's New Year's starting the busiest? And why is the answer, Heather? Yeah, it's Heather because everybody wants to close at year end, but then the holidays come and nobody really can get, it can't get done, especially the way the holidays fell this year.

They really took us out for two weeks, which was great. But now most of the deals that wanted to close at year end are closing in January this year. Mills, we walk us through that psychotic whiteboard behind you, pinboard. It kind of looks like that meme, you know, where the guy's like... Yeah, we're trying to be in. What's going on there? Yeah.

They're all different jobs. I could you... Okay, thank you. So it starts over here. These are jobs we have coming up. These are jobs that we have coming up. These are jobs that we're on, and these are jobs that we're trying to finish.

That is a lot of jobs, simultaneously. How many crews? It depends on the type Overall I mean Like 14 So you're trying to staff 14 crews

Across all of those jobs Simultaneously Yep Wow What is the what is the top line size of your business Just you don't have to say the exact number But I'm just curious A rough magnitude

30 million 30 And you're So that means a job is like roughly One or two million bucks Typically average order value is like 350 but they range from like 5,000 to 6 million. Okay. Wow.

Crazy. And it's mostly schools still? Yeah, a lot of schools, but all commercial, no shingles. Yeah. Well, gang, happy new year. We have a special guest today. Josh is with us back again for your third time, Josh? Yep.

And half of those times so far I've been without me, so you're welcome. Yeah, me and Josh. I've been holding it down every time, it feels like. Thanks for having me. Well, I brought a deal, but before we get into it, Josh, you want to introduce yourself, tell the audience who you are and what you do? Sure. Yeah, I'm Josh Tunison.

I own and operate Tunison accounting services. My firm is specialized in quality of earnings reports for people buying small businesses. So would you say you've seen a lot of small businesses, Josh? I've seen a lot, yeah. That's why I love having you on the show because you've done, you know, that's like you and Heather bring this like different perspective of, you know, the debt and then the accounting, like the more technical, because the equity guys are the optimists. You guys have to be the pessimists. So it's good to have some pessimism on the pod.

And you see a lot of deals. We think so, right, Josh? Yeah, we see it all day and we're tired of it. Speaking of a deal, I brought one and it's a big boy. I want to see it. What do you got? It's a generational equity deal. Oh, Mills is a favorite. And it's number, number 09159. and it is a high-performing and scalable precious materials buyer located in the eastern United States. So for over 15 years, this precious materials buyer with locations in the eastern United States has acquired gold, silver, coins, diamonds, luxury watches, and other valuables directly from consumers through their storefront locations. Items are evaluated and purchased through the customer's presence using advanced ex-referlorescent technology and proprietary ERP software, ensuring transparent, accurate, and efficient. transactions. Acquired items are sold to refineries, jewelry stores, resellers, and direct-to-retail customers via eBay. They've been

reinventing and disrupting an antiquated industry in much the way, same way CarMax legitimized and modernized used car dealerships. The company has established a highly scalable platform that could be easily expanded to other markets nationwide and are accelerated through a franchising model. In 2025, they are projecting $41 million in revenue. They did $6 million projected EBDA in 2025. So it's about 15% EBITA margins. And that is up from about 22 million in

2024 and 2.9 million EBIDA in 2024. So hell of a year. Almost double. Almost exactly. On top line and bottom line. Yeah. So Bill, do you understand what these guys do? So I think this is like literally we buy gold, right? This is like you drive down the street and like someone has hammered a sign into the telephone pole says, we buy gold, text us or whatever, and you bring your grandfather's gold watch so you can make rent? Is that what this is? I think so.

And then they're reselling it like on eBay. They're not like melting down the gold and selling it as a commodity. It seems like they're selling, I want to say pawn shop, but they're not, I don't think, I think they're buying it outright. They're not doing the whole give you a loan against it kind of thing. But it seems like to be. No, this is a trading business.

So they're going to buy, your precious metals. And it says that acquired items are sold to refineries, jewelry stores, reseller, and director retail on eBay. So any of the above, like they will, they are flippers, basically. Like they're going to low ball you on your watch or your gold bar or the thing you stole out of that fell off a truck, et cetera. And then they're going to resell it at full market value, I would think. I mean, that's this model. Yeah, it's almost like the arbitrage play of you need to sell it now. And we know who will pay the fair price for it. and we will hold it, you know.

Yeah, we'll carry it for a couple months on our books and then get market price for it. Yeah. So do they have a bunch of storefronts somewhere like all across the Northeast? Like we buy gold storefronts? So I was going to say no, except then it said the items are purchased in the presence of the customer. Didn't it say that? Yeah. And using the Electra is, yeah, items are evaluated and purchased in the customer's presence using X-ray fluorescence technology and proprietary ERP software.

So yeah, right? Like people are bringing valuables into storefronts, I would think, or they're coming to your house, which sounds very dangerous. You know, with cash, I guess. I mean, I would assume this is a cash transaction. There are so many accounting questions that come up. Oh, yeah, Josh, had been around warming, like, oh, my gosh. It describes that their differentiation is they have an upscale and refined

customer experience over typical gold buyers and pawn shops. Okay, so it's a storefront, right? It's got to be. Yeah. Or it's like we come to you and I show up in a suit and you brought out a white tablecloth and I inspect your thing with a mobile electrofree, a mobile extraperescent thing and I give you a bid right there. But like that, you're walking into their house with a briefcase more cash. Like you're going to get mugged. That can't be true. Yeah. I don't think they do that. Josh, this deal comes across your desk. What is the first couple questions that come to mind?

First couple questions. I obviously want to review the balance sheet. I want to see how much they're carrying. So I did a quality of earnings on not the same business, obviously, but I say similar one where it was actually sale to retail, though. And a lot of what we saw is that they made a lot more money when gold prices were accelerating or appreciating, I should say, which is that something that you could really count on?

being repeatable income. Not really, right? Gold can't accelerate in theory maybe for a few years, but right, you can't have that every year. So that's where tying back the actual EBITA that they're advertising to, to what gold or other precious metals are doing is important because you want to make sure, right, what's consistent, what's repeatable, what can you bank? And then two, it's like, well, what's the hold life on it, right? So it's like, well, they're buying it and selling it a week later, then the gold appreciation probably doesn't have as much of an impact as if they held it for six months or something. So there's knowing inventory and reviewing the balance sheet for that, I'd say. So gold has gone up like crazy the past year, right? Bill GPT, what's the

answer to that? Yeah, it's like nearly double. I mean, over the last 18, 24 months. Yes, gold is up huge. So that helps these guys, because if people's gold's more valuable, right, in theory, it's going to sell for more, therefore they can get more total more. margin on the whole thing. Yeah, I mean, their balance sheet is just appreciating value, right? Anything they're carrying. Their inventory is just increasing, right? I can't lose. The longer they hold, it just goes up. All right, pessimism, Heather. What's the other than argument? pessimism, raising their hand. But what happens when the price of gold declines? And, you know, what did they pay for the gold that they're carrying? Like, to Josh's point out, how long did they

carry the gold is where the risk is because they can get caught on the other side of that. I mean, that's the thing about this business, right? It's like a giant gold trade, right? You need to, you need velocity. Like, you can't, the goal of this business, like, this business run well is not a price of gold speculation business. This business run well is a volume business. And, like, you own it for a couple days and you can't, you know, you're just not, you don't own it long enough to get really creamed on the price of gold because you know you're

going to sell it in three days to your refinery or whatever. and you just need to move as many gold watches and bars through as possible. So that's my question is, like, their balance sheet, like, if they're doing it well, it should be three days of sales. Yeah. The interesting thing about these businesses is, like, on the acquisition and disposition side, like, it's so fine. It needs to be, if you sign the NDA and you look at this, you get the SIM,

it needs to be so finely tuned. Like, are they disciplined in the way that they acquire things? Is it just that we have 100 storefronts? in Atlanta or something like that and that's how we get it. That has a moat. That's actually pretty competitive. But then on the disposition side when they're getting rid of it, like is it just a giant hustle or is there some kind of formulaic way that they know now is the right time to go to eBay versus now is the right time to go to, you know, the smelter and it just gets melted down into something else? I would be really curious because businesses like this in this industry

have a tendency to be very like hustle kind of it all like a guy's cell phone rings and like all roads lead to him and if he dies like the whole business goes to zero yes in theory these guys should be able to you know buy a discount from the consumer right and then at having more scale means in theory they have people whose entire job is to understand okay we just got you know three ounces of golden today from Topeka can this, like, what do we do with it? And sometimes it's in a good finish product, and they're going to go sell it at wholesale to somebody.

Sometimes they're going to go send it to the refiner. Like, in theory, they should be seeing benefit from being bigger. And I think they talked about here, they have this custom ERP software that they've built, which in a perfect world, if I designed the perfect business, there is a whole software system in the background that is, like, basically doing all of this thinking

and optimizing how they get rid of all this gold or diamonds or silver, and then maximize kind of their outcome for it, you know, on a daily basis, like a trading house almost. I think they're saying they have, Michael. Right? Like, that's what it says. It's either proprietary ERP hooked up to their electroferesis machines and they should

know kind of what the bid is right there. The ERP sounds freaking awesome. It does sound cool. Yeah. I mean, like in a perfect world that ERP is connected to whatever the smelter is paying on spot price that day per quantity, right? it would just be kind of magical.

Well, and then it becomes, that's what you want, because then it becomes not a hustle. And you know what you can pay, and you're going to do the deal, and you probably know where you're going to sell it before you even buy it, right? The ERP knows where you're going to unload it to. And so then it's just back to what I said before,

is it's a volume business. And then it's actually, you know, if you have that set up where you can buy right and you know you can sell, then it's just like any other business. It's marketing, it's location, it's lead gen, it's how do I get people through the door, and it's just how much volume can we do?

How does this deal, you sign the NDA, how does this deal actually get done? I think there's a high likelihood that there's some, like skeletons in the closet and probably some things that disqualify you from financing. Oh, I'll tell you what I think kills this deal immediately. I think I'll tell you what the problem's going. All right, sir, sir, we've got to get to,

are we in 10 minutes yet? You can't poop on it yet. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Well, he asked, I was going to tell him. Or 13 minutes in. Okay, yeah, keep going, Bill. Tell us why this is a great deal before I kill it. Well, hang on.

Let's first talk about, like, Heather, can I get a loan for this? Or is this like a money transfer business? Like, does this become more like a commodity trading thing and no bank's going to touch it? I think that's the problem is that they're not willing to take the risk. You really have to know your inventory. Yeah, ERP sounds good, but a lender is going to look at that and still say, somebody's still got to have the smarts behind it to know how much inventory should we be buying right now

is the demand soft right now all those things that you kind of have to have some instincts for I think this is a tough one for a lender to get comfortable with and is it because the lender is just going to be nervous about the value of the inventory or is because the lender is going to be contractually or regulatorily prohibited from lending to this business I think they would I don't think there's any

prohibition for a lender to do this. I think they could do it if they wanted to. I think that anytime you talk about commodity goods trading, you find lenders running out the door. They don't want to be involved in lending in that business because any business in commodities from a lenders perspective can be doing beautifully for long, long periods of time and can just drive right off the cliff in a day. And they don't want to be involved in something that has that potential for volatility. And it's because of the reversal on your inventory, right? Like the market moves against you and you're stuck with a ton of frozen woodshed. It doesn't matter. You made a bad trade. You bought too much at the wrong price and there it's over. Yep. I did due diligence on a deal and almond farming

slash almond brokerage deal. Do you guys know where most almonds are grown? I do. California. 80% of the world's almonds are grown in California. And it's very contentious about water consumption as I guess our most farming operations. But it was very hard to find, even like at a very high, you know, equity ratio, it was very hard to find somebody who got comfortable with it because they're like, I mean, it's so, it's commoditized. It's a commodity good and it's being traded. So that's risky. But there's, it's so niche that like there's not that many people who really understand the nuances of it. And lenders couldn't get comfortable with it, even at like 50%, you know, debt and equity.

Very common. Anything commodity trading oriented, you're going to find that. So that's going to hold down the multiple on this business significantly, right? Because you're not, it's going to be darn close to all equity, I would think. Seller note and equity. Yeah. That's what you've got to work with. There's one thing on this that I wonder about from a regulatory and a compliance standpoint.

Like, we, we scrap a lot of metal that we take off of jobs and we have to have a scrapper's license to be able to take. it to take like copper and aluminum and steel. I wonder if there's a dynamic at play for them where they have some competitive advantage because not just anybody can walk like with a, you know, a bucket full of gold watches to the recycling place and say, how much will you get me for this? There may be some regulation. And I don't know if that's just state by state, I'm pretty sure. Well, is that probably different? Like I need to haul off all this copper and aluminum versus I'm buying this watch. Well, yeah, but I think if they are, if they are actually taking some of this, like, if they're

like, it's a bunch of broken jewelry and we're not going to repair it, you know, it's just a bunch of broken necklaces that we've gotten over the last quarter, and they're just going to take them to be, you know, melted down. I would think, though, that you can't, because of trying to protect consumers and protect, I mean, it happens with catalytic converters. We got a bunch stolen, and you can't just walk into the place with, with, with, a, catalytic converter much less like 100 and be like how much will you give me for these? Because they want to know where you got it. And so if somebody's showing up with 100 catalytic

converters a week, they want to know who you are and at least your alibi for why you got. Because there's like very small trace amounts of very expensive metal in those that gets parsed out. So similarly, if you're showing up with 50 gold watches a week, you got to have a good reason that you got 50 gold watches. They want to know who you are. Yeah. Okay. But problem. I mean, that's more of a, you know, you got to do the paperwork. Like, it's not impossible to get that, right? Correct. And I'm thinking these people obviously have it if they're doing something like this. And that is a valuable, you know, just credential of the business that you would want to figure out, how does it transfer at the sale? The qualifier is probably the founder

or the owner, not the business itself. At least that's the way it is for scrapping licenses. Is there any chance that this business is connected to or involved in some illegal stuff, money laundering that sort of thing yes well either explicitly or implicitly I mean you could be very easily implicated right

people are bringing you stuff and you're just buying it and you don't know the providence of the stuff like where these gold bars come from right you could be the part of the chain that is turning an illicit gold bar into clean dollars and have no idea with a wanderer whether you know it or not right right

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take the next big step. So don't wait to make your business ownership dream or reality. Visit AcquisitionLab.com today to learn more and schedule your free consultation. And when you do, be sure to tell them the Acquisitions Anonymous podcast sent you. Well, have you guys read about all the dispensaries, like the cash taking dispensaries like in Colorado and places like that and some of the estimated stats on where the money's actually coming from? No, how does that work? So, okay. So the dispensaries historically, because it's federally regulated, you're not allowed to sell marijuana, like the dispensaries historically

only took cash. And then eventually they couldn't have a banking license. I couldn't have no way to take a credit card. There's no way to have a bank account. So it was like a cash business. I lived in Colorado during this time, Michael. Yeah. So massive, massive dump loads of cash. They got robbed all the time. All the time. That's what, that's basically what Tulsa King is about with Sylvester Salon. Oh. I haven't, I haven't watched any Sylvester Stallove movie since Rambo. So basically so much cash is coming in these things

that eventually the Federal Reserve just started to create services where they would actually go pick up the cash at these dispensaries and give the cash receipts to these folks because they couldn't do anything with them. And so supposedly the rumors are what the majority of that cash is,

they're actually being used as money laundering fronts to take cartel money and put that into the system. So it looks like they're selling so much in the way of marijuana, but some estimates are it's a third or half is what I've read of a lot of the cash coming in is actually drug money from other drugs, not from THC. So meaning like they take the drug money and they just use it to buy more marijuana, which they will then resell illegally and end up with, like it's just buying more inventory, but now the money that they bought becomes clean because it was retail, it was washing.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it gets put in the system because it supposedly semi-legal marijuana. sales, but in reality, they just showed up with $2 million in cash and ran it through one of these money laundering, you know, marijuana dispensaries. So that's where a lot of the cash is supposed to come on. We're not actually using that much pot. So they'll own one and, you know, half of it will be normal consumers, just patronizing the business, and then the other half is their laundering operation. Yep. Interesting. That's some of the estimates. It's pretty nuts. believable. All right, so back to this. So do we think these guys are doing anything illegal or do you think

they're just kind of a byproduct of some of that because what was the total revenue figure again? 41 million, 2 million? Up double year over year. That's a lot of transactions of like small purchases or sales, right? So that's like my first hint

is that maybe, you know, it could be the same thing as the dispensary, a certain percentage of that is legitimate transactions and another percentage might not be. Yeah, the thing that I want to do in Dillard. here is basically get a customer list. Like you're going to break down that 40 million. And if 15 of it comes from three

customers, I don't like that at all. Because now I've got a, even if it's perfectly legitimate, now I need to underwrite those customers. Where are they getting it? Is that clean? Are they going to keep coming back? Now I have customer concentration risk. But it's worse than customer concentration risk because either they could leave you or they could be criminals. You know, it's like that is not

typical customer concentration risk. So I would love to see, you know, just a whole bunch of mom and pops off the street and no big customer concentration risk. And like maybe, maybe best case scenario, they are a clearing house for pawn shops or something like that where you go, okay, you don't necessarily have the full retail experience. And maybe they do have a very nice elevated retail experience, but they also are a back end, you know, and a clearing house for others. That would explain to me, I would, I'm dying. to know, I would sign the NDA just to figure out how do their revenue double? The reason I think it's probably legit is because of how much they talk about the software,

the X-ray fluorescence machines, like, it feels like they've actually built a system healer that scales. I would love to hear the story of the entrepreneur who started this. This probably started as a hustle, right? The guy with four cell phones, you know, trading watches and stuff. There's a great chance. Like, this is like a, you know, a start. eight years ago by a 22-year-old hustler, right, who has, who like gradually professionalized it. And it was like, I know, how am I going to verify instead of I don't have to bite the gold every time I could buy one of these x-ray for us as machines? And they're like, then we're going to build custom software to pipe the price of gold into my app on my phone. And I bet it potentially just built like that.

And the guy turned a hustle into the business, which are like my favorite stories in all of business. people never lie in their teasers either. So it's probably what Bill's saying, but it also could be exaggerated. Generational equity is up there with website closers. These guys never let us down. You can always trust them. I mean, one thing I would definitely do is sell them some gold as part of diligence.

Like, I would have a friend go sell them some gold and watch that transaction happen. This is a great secret coverage. If you want the real customer experience, Bill, you can go over to Mills's house, break into it, steal whatever gold is there, smash it with a hammer, then take it to one of the stores like the rest of the customers are. Well, wouldn't that be funny? Like, you report your own gold stolen and then try to sell it to them and see if they'll buy it and see what happens.

And then hire Josh and go, okay, Josh, I want you to see how it hit the books, like what price are they carrying at? Watch them sell it. Like, just watch like a known quantity go all the way through the system. Yeah. I would definitely. I mean, one thing you love about this business, this is an inflation-resistant business, right? If prices of the dollar is getting less and less, like the price of gold in theory

is going up, right? And gold is an inflation hedge. Silver is the same way. Luxury stuff, these coins. Like, this is a nice business to own if you believe inflation is a real problem in the United States going forward. I mean, if you believe that the dollar, I'm not trying to say the dollar is going to zero and the dollar is going away, but if you believe the dollar will lose even any little bit of prominence, you know, fractions of percentage point, this business should do better, right? As people hold more precious metal, transacted more precious metal, you know, more of the world's value is denominated in precious metal, this business should do well. You could also just buy gold ETFs and save yourself, you know, $41 million or whatever they want for this.

I don't know if you're worried, I would be worried if they have any wholesale accounts. Like, if it is literally all the supply site is coming from retail customers and you You can verify that through the ERP. Okay, then I feel a lot better than if they do say, oh, yeah, we have a few of these wholesale pawn shops or whatever, because that's where if there is any illegal activity, that's where it's going to be. And I would think as a buyer, if there's any of that, that's a risk that would be very hard to underwrite.

There's just no way you really know what you're getting into on those wholesale type of relationships until you own the business. And then it's too late. There's this interesting subset of deals that I think you can take a business that is kind of in a gray area and legitimize it and put a bow on it for an institutional buyer and extract a ton of value. There is a different subset of businesses that no matter how big it gets, it stays illegitimate. And there's contagion risk. We looked at buying a firearms business years and years ago and like pension funds and like, institutional investors were like, we can't be associated with it. Good or bad. Like, it's just

too volatile to touch. And then I realized there's whole realms of people who just buy vice businesses solely based on the fact that other people can't buy them. I don't know which this is. I mean, I have a friend who, many friends that do oil and gas and they're like, a big part of my advantage is all these other big pools of capital have ESG mandates and they just can't do it. And I don't have an ESG mandate. And I don't have an ESG mandate. And so I can do these deals and they can't. And it's kind of the same thing. If you're able to invest in this, it's a moat.

All right, Josh, where does this deal fall apart? No, I think it's the gold depreciation. Like, you see it doubled from last year, right? Gold doubled. So it's not only the revenue that's increasing, right? But it's also when people get excited about it and they start to sell. Oh, wow, gold is higher. So even if gold stays the same price, but the excitement decreases now, you're going to run into trouble.

So it's really just a matter of price, right? are they basing it off of the highest year right now? Or is it a lower year? And can you make the terms work like Heather was saying? Yeah, that was my prediction for why this deal falls apart, Bill. It's just like they're going to have it price peak. These guys are trying to sell at the top. They're professional gold buyers and sellers.

They're pretty good at timing the market. And I think that's what they're doing. And I think this is all because they have a ton of appreciation of inventory. And I think everybody is rushed to sell gold because the price is so high. And yeah. So I think that's where this falls apart. they're going to want six times EBDA, and you're going to be like,

what, sir? Sir, this is only going to going to go worse from here. Yeah, well, not only they're going to want six times EBDA, they're going to want you to buy the inventory. I mean,

I don't think it's run as efficiently as I hope it would be, like they have more than three days of inventory, right? So there's definitely a sizable amount of precious metals on the balance sheet, as Josh called out earlier. The question is,

how do you value that? I mean, the value that changes every minute while the market's open, maybe 24-7. So you've got to value it at close. and you might, do you have to hedge it? I mean, you might, like, that might be part of this business, is hedging your inventory to lock in the value.

But I don't know how you pay on ebidot multiple and, like, how would you structure this, guys? I mean, is it a, is it a, I almost think you got to do like a rev share, like a decreasing rev share over the next two to three years and seller finance the inventory. Something like that. It depends on the seller. It depends on the seller profile. because like this may be the most wheeler dealer like creative structure seller in the world.

Like it could be a boomer, right, who's like, I've just been building this thing. It keeps, you know, fluctuates over time with the price of the commodity like Josh said. And he's just like, you know, I've reached my heyday. And yeah, it's a good time to sell while I'm on top. Or like Bill, you said, it could be a 22 year old who started this thing, you know, or he's 30 now started when he was 22 and kind of stumbled in. to like an incredible market, the deal structure has to be totally,

you know, specific to those two different seller types. All right, so where do we stand on this one? I'll tell you what I think, because I always go last, I'll go first this time. This is a business I would love to own, I would hate to buy it. Like, I think it's going to be just price for it.

I'm just going to be scared that there's so many extraneous factors and it's just going to be yucky. So, Mills, what do you think? I, zero chance that I could buy this business, but I want to sign the India. have a lot of questions. Josh. I've been on enough really interesting site visits to know that this will be an amazing thing.

You know it's going to smell like cigar smoke. Wherever you go. I am willing to bet, Michael, it does not smell like cigar smoke. I bet I would be willing to bet you find a very professionalized, like young, hustler, almost internet marketer type. I mean, with the electrofilecious machines, the custom ERP, I I bet you could find like a machine here, which is cool. But still, I don't know that you can buy it for all the reasons that have been mentioned. But I don't, I would have just, there's enough clues here.

I don't think this is smoky backroom guy with eight cell phones. I think it's probably someone who has extrapolated a hustle and productized it. And honestly, I think they should keep going. I think they should, if that's what it is, they should not sell it. And they should open up more storefronts or find a way to franchise it out, which they mention here. If it's an electro-freezes machine and a license for the ERP,

they should franchise this thing. You know, and let people open doors all over because they just need more dollars in, right? And then it's a process, then you flip it, and then they end up with more volume,

right? And they pump it all through their refineries or their eBay account. I think it's just got to get bigger if it's a good system. I'm really interested in this one. I have no idea how you structure a deal for it. And because the two problems are,

of course, what multiple we pay for it, and is it at the top and it's doubling year of year and how do you value that? And then separately, the inventory value is going to be non-trivial. And I don't know how you value that either. Josh? Yeah, for me, I'd be interested in it. Obviously, it's just you have the inventory value.

You kind of take that out of the purchase price in my opinion, but then you think, like, what is the actual value of what you're buying? How good are they at generating the leads for the goal that they're getting? And then what's the value of their network that they're selling things to? So that could have some value to it 100%. So I'd be interested to learn more. It's not SBA pre-approved.

Just one thing other to say about this, it's generational equity, which is my favorite subbox. You could literally sign the NDA, I think in like 30 seconds online, and within a minute you will have the SIM. And while that is nice, if you want to look at a bunch of deals,

it doesn't necessarily create the best pool for you to swim in as a person who wants to own this business long term. Thousands of people could have signed the NDA and received the SIM. And if there is anything kind of proprietary in nature about what they do that you don't want out there on the street, like it's out there already. So that's something that gives me a little bit of an ick with with this in particular. There's just something to keep in mind about the kind of broker process. So Mills, that's interesting because I was thinking, you know,

I think it was girly that insinuated maybe people, you know, you that said people lie in these things and overinflate. Like if you sign this and it is just a guy with an, with a x-ray machine and a pretty basic off-the-shelf software, you could replicate this pretty quickly, right? And out-execute him, especially if he's not in your area.

So I would be really nervous about hiring generational equity to sell this business. Yeah. All right. Did everybody have a chance to weigh in? Heather? He said no loan, so no go. Yeah, I'm out.

Awesome. This is a fun one. I don't think we've ever done. Thank you. Great fine, Mike. I spent a good 12 seconds looking for it. What did you Google to find this teaser? Actually, for some reason, I'm on the generational equity, like matching program, and it

thinks I want to see this, which it turns out I'm the kind of degenerate that wants to see this, so it was right on the money. Because you search for $6 million. dollar ebid dot deals and that's your filter yeah yeah exactly but i mean honestly like it does sort of show why search takes forever right because you kiss a ton of frogs and you see a ton of boring stuff and you just open you know your inbox one day and some random broker has something that fits your profile and you know i don't know whose profile this is but somebody like this is different and sometimes a gem or it's something different comes through it's a really good one all right guys

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