Digital Social Hour - He Sells Gems for a Living | Avi the Gem Guy Rahmanim Digital Social Hour #92

Episode Date: September 2, 2023

Avi Rahmanim explains how he got into selling gems for a living and how he became an expert negotiator in the gem space. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/digitalsocialhour/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You ever gotten scammed like they sold you a fake gem? It's really common in this business, man. I sit down and there's just a line of dealers, miners that just like line out the door. They crowd you, like throw gems in your face, like you just have to negotiate on the spot. But I'm saying if you're on a date, like no one's gonna... Yeah, it's like that guy with the diamond testicle. A lot of jewelry owners get in sketchy situations with robberies, people trying to take their shit.

Has that ever happened with you? Not with me personally. No. I know like my dad's been in a car chase or two. Wow, you've been chasing? Oh yeah. Welcome to the Digital Social Hour. I'm your host, Sean Kelly. Here with my co-host, Wayne Lewis. What up, what up? And our guest today, Avi Ramanam. How's it going?

What's going on? Good. Thanks for having me, guys. Absolutely. In Las Vegas. The Gem King. Thank you very much. The Gem King. That's what some people call me. He flips gems. Yeah, I see. Talk to me about how you got into that.

So it actually started off with a family business. So my dad immigrated to the States. You know, pretty much nothing as most immigrants do. He, uh, his uncle was in the business. So we just gave my dad some gems. He's like, you know, go sell these. Eventually it, uh, kind of became like a, you know, more established business. Um, I didn't know I was going to go into it like from, you know, my childhood, I was kind of like working summers, like doing like, you know, like bitch work and kind of like working summers like doing like you know like bitch work and stuff like sorting out like diamond melee like small tiny diamonds and stuff um but

like my sophomore year of college i uh you know he was like diagnosed with uh dementia so i knew i kind of wanted to go into it full time right um so yeah i went on a trip with him overseas to do like a gemstone buying we buy most of our gemstones from like thailand sri lanka um so i went with him when he was like starting to like you know get some symptoms of dementia and i just kind of gathered all the info watch him negotiate see what kind of gems we were buying and then after that it was just solo wow there yeah so you guys cut the gems to they actually come in a rock right yeah so they come in a rough form we don't actually cut them we usually buy them already cut okay cuz

it's we can cut them here but it's just more expensive in the States like more get them like shaped we have like a guy doing like repairs and stuff on gems but um no cutting them it's mostly overseas so what's the difference between a gem and a crystal so a gem is it can be a crystal um but not all gems are crystals so um yeah like a quartz crystal if it's you know a nice looking crystal it could be considered a gem but um you know there's like different types of gems that aren't crystals like pearls for example um those could be considered gems but pearls can be considered gems why yeah there's like there's organic and inorganic types of gems so organic is like pearls like coral things like that and organic

would be like sapphires diamonds what's your favorite type of gem tone I like sapphires they're cool just my favorite colors blue sapphire blue yeah yeah I see a lot of jewelers actually play around with this with the sapphire so yeah custom pieces and stuff yeah they're fun man like so uh jewelers actually play around with this with the sapphire so yeah custom pieces and stuff too yeah they're fun man like so most jewelers like you know everyone knows diamonds um gemstones are like a whole different world um and yeah gems get the same respect as diamonds so depends who you ask depends who asks yeahonds have, you know, the marketing behind it. Everyone knows that a diamond is expensive. It shines. And diamonds are really cool.

Like, I mean, they're like super shiny and stuff, you know. But I just like colored stones better. Like sapphires, rubies, emeralds. It's just like, I don't know. Diamonds are like, everything's like, you know. The same. The same, you know. The D color is like the best. Like, you just get like, I don you know the same you know yeah the d color is like the best like you

just get like i don't know color stones it's like you could have a preference of royal blue or you could have a preference of like a light colored you know sapphire um so it's like i don't know so i've heard the diamond industry is kind of like a monopoly is the gem industry like that where there's just a few key players at the top no no not at all um most of our gems that we buy overseas are from like small mining operations mostly in sri lanka and it's very small scale like it's uh you know these these mines are like 10 meters deep 10 meters out um and yeah like different people could own different parts of the mine rented and uh interesting yeah it's pretty small scale because the diamond industry is a monopoly oh it's this i mean they're killing over that i mean is this the same thing are they killing over

gems too no no i wouldn't say so like there's always conflict with some, I'm sure. Just like with anything that's high value that could be traded easily. But yeah, with the diamond industry, I don't think it still is a monopoly. I think the big companies like De Beers that everyone talks about that used to have a large portion of the market share. I think they have like 25% to 30%, if I'm not mistaken. So it's still like a, what do you call it, like oligopoly. You know, there's like only a few key players. But yeah, it's like, I actually don't, like, I don't know. Maybe it still is.

Maybe it still is. What's the most expensive gym you've ever seen? Or what is the highest price for a gym? Like the most expensive you've ever seen? I mean, the highest price for gym like the most expensive you've ever seen or it could i mean there's there's no limit to like how expensive it could be um yeah like what's the most expensive you've heard of or seen yourself with your own eyes or held yeah so a few years ago at uh i was actually here in vegas for like the gym convention yeah um and there's this one booth that had i mean like enormous untreated unheated sapphires

that are just like 50 plus carats wow and i held five of them in my hand that i think equaled like 10 million bucks holy just just in my hand like five of them together i mean these are like you know the purest like huge like to get a huge crystal like that with little imperfections, with a saturated color like that, it's, I mean, it's, like, incredibly rare. So where would you go about gem hunting? Is there anywhere in the U.S. you could gem hunt? Yeah, yeah. So in the U.S., there's, I actually haven't done it. Sounds fun, right?

Yeah. I mean, how would that work though you go underground right and you yeah so there's different places i know there's a quartz mine in arkansas that you go to it's like open to the public and you just like walk around like you know like i don't know smack some walls and find some like huge purple crystals those are like gem gems there actually are some sapphire mines in montana um and i have made some connections i haven't gone though you should go i'd love to i'd love to that'd be some great content um but yeah it's like yeah it's mostly like smaller scale in montana as well um but yeah i

mean some of the gems that come out of there are really cool yeah and how are the margins because i know with watches they're pretty thin is it similar with gems uh it depends it depends usually it's like if it's usually the smaller the item is the higher the margin is okay the more expensive it is the slimmer the margin is kind of like most things like you can't like you know double your money on a $50,000 stone. It's just not... I would say they're better than diamonds and watches. Oh, it's better? Oh, yeah.

Watches are thin, man. Very thin. And the problem with watches is the price can fluctuate. It went down a lot recently. Yeah. And the watch. Yeah. Especially the iced out ones.

Those are like hard to sell. The values. They drill them. Yeah. They take away all the value. Every time they drill a hole, drill a hole, the watch becomes really light for real.

Yeah. And I mean, it's no value there. I just like them though. Yeah. No, they look sick. Yeah.

The thing is like, yeah, like the purists or whatever. I mean, they're always going to be snobby. Like, you ruined the watch. Literally ruined that watch it was

beautiful before you did that yeah like if it looks good like yeah you know it's always i mean subjective so yeah now if you look at a price chart history of gems what would it look like starting from you know 1900s i guess it pretty much i mean it pretty much only goes up kind of um i mean it just depends like if there's a new gem that gets introduced to the market like for example um i forgot how long ago i think in the 70s there was a big pocket of tanzanites found in tanzania um and when tanzanite tanzanite yeah it's uh it's like a bluish purplish color with really like rich color is that rare um so that's the

thing so when i've never heard of a tanzanite you haven't heard about yeah it's like it's relatively common um it's you know they sell it a lot on like cruise ships and stuff because i mean they mark it up like crazy yeah you never hear people say yeah this is tanzanite yeah it's not as popular as like the big three like sapphires rubies and emeralds um but yeah so they when they first got introduced to the market um it was like a craze over everyone's like god this is like amazing like uh super like expensive like they were i think competing with sapphires in price um but eventually kind of like as they found bigger and bigger deposits of it and then the price kind of just stabilized so it kind of went down and that's kind

of i would say that's pretty common with uh with like most things that come to the market but i mean to find a new gem deposit like that it's it's pretty pretty rare right yeah yeah but yeah sapphires rubies emeralds they just kind of like just climb in price because less and less of them get you know introduced to the market right and like supply and demand there's a finite amount of the of it on the world yep yeah yep interesting so i i hear you're pretty good with negotiations how does how does that how does that work that's your forte right yeah coming down on the price pretty much pretty much me where your price yeah you know it's like it's the type of industry where it's it's very traditional in that way it's just like person to person you're negotiating every single stone

or parcel that you buy it's it's like kind of goes back to just like the basics of like business you know you want to buy it for as little as possible and then sell it for as you know as much as you can before you get undercut by you know but yeah what's an example of like someone who came in there and they were trying to you know highball you and you they walked out of there like what just happened that's funny literally every person i deal with because like you know they they see that you know they watch me on social media and stuff and they try to come in and beat you they try to come in and like if they see i buy something at a certain price i mean they can't tell the clarity color and all that just from like my video you know you really have to

get up close and personal with the stone to see it um so they come in expecting like oh he's about to pay three thousand dollars for a one carat emerald and i'm just like look at it i'm like i'm sorry but it's garbage like you know but you know it's it depends if someone really comes in offer like offering a fair price and i accept it you know i'm not so what was the highest one came in at and what was the lowest you bought it at? And did, did the transaction happen? Like,

yeah, well, I would say most, I mean, most stones that I negotiate, the transaction doesn't happen. Um, but you know,

with every person, if a person comes in with, you know, 50, a hundred stones and odds are good. I'll buy one or two of them. Um, but yeah, that's like things that I'm interested in so the highest i don't know i mean just off the top of the head like someone

came in the other day with they came from columbia asking for like i don't know like 5 000 a carat for a stone we ended up settling on like 1500 per carat wow yeah so it's like yeah they won how how much 5 000 per carat so we we price things per carat which is a carat is one-fifth of a gram so we kind of weighed you know per mass kind of like you know buying you know bananas from supermarket right um and yeah so they got down to 1500 per carat 1500 per carat from like 5000 a carat how did you do that whether whether the diamonds wasn't as good as you thought they were he you know people come in just wanting as much as possible so they started a crazy number and then you know i i offer it i'm like if you're wanting to sell me that i will sell it to you for a quarter

of the price and i show them my own inventory you know that's like always like a way of you know kind of putting things into reality perspective you know yeah exactly so um yeah i don't yeah i don't know and were you always good at negotiating or did it take a while because a lot of people suck at it so like did you develop it naturally or yeah so i was I was, so my first trip overseas for a buying trip was, you know, with my dad. Um, and I just kind of like watched and it just like, you know, saw how like it works. Um, and then, yeah. And after that was my first solo trip. But I would say like a really good way to learn how to negotiate well is to just go

to like Southeastia and just like negotiate because everything there is kind of like up in the air yeah like an open market where they sell like you know like knock off like i don't know disease and stuff yeah like you just kind of like work on like the back and forth you just kind of like know how to read the person see how they they react you match their energy and just kind of i don't know like i've never been like scared to negotiate i know some people like run away from it yeah they run away from it because most things we're not used to it here like most things aren't negotiable you're not walking to like a store i'm always like when it comes to buying stuff i'm all i mean whether it's not

the store but when it comes to like jewelry and stuff oh yeah bro i'm gonna go back and forth i go hard at garage sales and flea markets even though i'm saving like two dollars i just love negotiating i mean you gotta kind of try your luck a little bit right right exactly it doesn't hurt to ask no because i mean cheaper is better do you believe in they have to make the first offer or are you comfortable saying a price first i don't like it when so i always ask what their price is just to see where their head's at with it yeah um if they tell me make an offer then i just say something ridiculously low and then that's when they say their first offer you know it's like you're not going to come into like my store and just be like yeah like tell me tell me, give me an offer for something. I want to see where they're at. See if like, you know what they're trying to,

if they're trying to rip me off or, you know, have you ever gotten scammed? Like they sold you a fake gem. Have I, I mean, it's, it's really common in this business, man. Like it's really common. So you just have to be careful. Um, I've definitely bought things so overseas in sri lanka what i do is it's like an open market yeah um i sit down and there's just a line of dealers miners that just like line out the door they crowd you like throw gems in your face like you just have to negotiate on the spot um luckily like what i do is you know i send everything to a lab first to verify

and then if somebody comes back you know not what the result that i expected then i just don't pay for it like they keep the gem and i kind of work it with a broker that way oh but in the store um i really i mean first of all you have to know I kind of have to like know the person a little bit. There are people that walk in and then you have to do the testing on the gems, like make sure it's not synthetic, um, make sure there's no treatments. But I mean, it's really common in this business. There's a lot of treatments that could, that are hard to detect. Um, so treatments make it a lot brighter, shiny. Yeah. They can improve the color clarity. It shakes away from the value

right but on the eyes there but when you test it out it's like no this business has been treated so it's not even yeah exactly it's like watches yeah but let me ask you a question so you you guys want to treat the gym yourself or you don't want to treat the gym well it depends there's treatments that are acceptable in the trade okay like sapphires and rubies they're heat treated right um and that's like a large percentage like 80 to 90 percent of sapphires on the market are heat treated so um they pretty much take the raw gem put it in like an oven for an extended period of time and it makes the color more saturated and kind of melts down some inclusions but yeah I mean the biggest thing is disclosure of

treatments new they don't tell you depend yeah if they're like a they're a bad dealer you know that yeah they won't tell you treatments and that's when you have to just know your and look at the gem and just know if it's synthetic or natural that's the biggest thing like and just know if it's synthetic or natural that's the biggest thing like um yeah just knowing if something's like real or not yeah a lot of jewelry owners get in sketchy situations with robberies people trying to take their has that ever happened with you not with me personally no um i know like my dad's been in a car chase or two back in the day. You chased him?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a common thing, you know, but we have like our safety measures in place. Like we don't leave the shop with anything on us ever, ever. We ship everything fully insured, like armored shipping services. Wow. Yeah. So it's like, and we're, you you know we're on like a higher up floor

of our jewelry building so yeah wow so you stay protected yeah i mean they have to bro they got something everybody wants that has a lot of value to it especially if you get one of the ones that's uncut or pure yeah yeah it's a lot of money but can i get caught like as far as the serial numbers and and like like this some gemstones yeah yeah like if it's like diamonds uh if it's graded by the gia or like some other labs that have laser inscriptions on the girdle which is like the outer diameter of the diamond um and you could report that stolen or something kind of like reporting a stolen rolex but um you know those could always be like polished off yeah you're not getting that back yeah it's it's like an unfortunate thing and like

you know i know we have been like you know not robbed in the past but there have been like people that i don't know like did some stuff like so you do stuff you do custom jewelry too right yeah yeah so you can customize any watch any chain earrings whatever person is yes sir yeah so we just started getting into that recently um yeah it's been like it's been a fun kind of uh not side gig but it's like you know we, it really integrated into our business because we have the gemstones. We have like, you know, the meat of the of the jewelry. So, yeah, we work with custom like custom CAD designers and stuff. So anything you want, we can make.

Seems like gems are a pretty safe way to store your money. If you buy it right. Yeah. Yeah. Like gold. If you want to buy the right one. So. Yeah.

So the big three probably right like right if you are they easy to sell though once like let's say if he had two million dollars in stones and gems yeah is that easier is that easy for him to sell turn turn into cash or most people will stray away from war is that the problem that's the thing so it's you have to buy it it's not like gold where there's a set market price. It's just kind of whatever you buy it. You have to negotiate the price. There's no standardized price for gemstones. There are for diamonds, kind of.

But yeah, gemstones, you would have to buy it at the lowest market rate, which is hard to do. It's just hard to do. And then you'd have to find a way to liquidate it because if you go try to sell it to you know like a jeweler or pawn shop they're gonna offer you like 25 percent of what you know 50 percent of what it's worth right um so you need a way to sell it yeah um but you know if you buy a high quality gemstone like a five carat columbian emerald no oil you know it could be a good way

to store your money you just have to make sure you buy it yeah i don't know how to sell it i'll buy a gold brick gold brick for sure yeah that's pretty safe that's yeah that's easy to say a way because the bank will buy that the bank will a bank will really yeah i don't know that i go break yeah for sure gold is very standardized yeah it's uh has a market price you buy it at you know spot price or a little bit less and then if it goes up 10 you're pretty much good you're pretty much good yeah pretty much good and what about the grading is it similar to diamonds like vvs vs with gemstones yeah um no no it's a different grade kind of so with uh clarity wise it's not like a standardized vvs vs si yeah because how many different grades are there so many

yeah it's like let's see there's flawless internally flawless vvs1 vvs2 because there's grades under the grade so there's si does si just s i want s i 2 s i 3 yeah so there's nine it's probably a scale but so there's there's nine but what is the internal grade so it's probably three internal grades under each grade right so yeah so there's nine there's nine clarity grades classes um kind of and then there's four four classes like the flawless yeah there's four classes under like the flawless yeah there's four classes under each grade wow so there's 36 grades probably bro because it goes it goes here and then it goes here it goes here and then it goes here right right yeah yeah well there yeah there's there's

nine grades by the gi there's nine nine grades but yeah like vs when someone says vs it's just yeah vs one vs yeah then there's vvs right it's just, yeah, VS1, VS2. Then there's VVS. Right. That's totally different from VS. Right. So for gems, what is it? How many are there? There isn't a scale. Oh, there's no scale? There's no scale.

Oh, wow. It's just like, you know, you could compare it to a diamond and be like, this would be a VS if it were a diamond, but there's not, there's kind of not that thing. So you need a lot of skill then, because you got to be able to see like imperfections, scratches. Yeah. I kind of always have been like in that mindset of like if it's eye clean, meaning you can't see anything with the naked eye, then like it's good.

It's good. I feel that. Yeah. Because who's going to pull up a microscope on you? Right. I'm right. Some jewelers do. They want to know what they're getting.

That's true. They want to know what's there. Yeah. If you want to know what's there. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm saying if you're on a date like yeah no one's gonna yeah yeah keep like bro i don't mean to break you guys up nice it's like that guy with the diamond test walking around

is there one of those testers for gems probably not really gems are dude they're just complicated you just have to know what you're looking at girls are right yeah it's like yeah it's not common to see them they are common but they're the most common uncommon piece of jewelry because people really want diamonds yeah they've been popular recently though like i've been selling a decent i would say like maybe 20 25 percent of like engagement ring sales that i've been doing have been gemstones yeah why emerald sapphires people just i mean bro he's getting millions of views yeah so he's starting a little little comeback i think yeah gems yeah dang they're on the rise so people are getting their wedding rings and but that does

that any have anything to do with uh birthstones in a way where the birthstone color it can because gyms are birthstones right yeah yeah yeah so like birthstones that's like a popular thing for yeah like jewelry in general um i would say like for engagement rings though you kind of want something that's durable enough to withstand daily wear because diamonds are they're very durable um they're like a 10 out of 10 on the most hardness scale meaning the only thing that could scratch a diamond is another diamond um sapphires are a 9 on that scale so one step below um but yeah they they can get some abrasion after wearing them for a while emeralds are even less durable um so like they can get abradion after wearing them for a while emeralds are even less durable um so like they can get abraded after a while but for the most part like if you're careful with it

you should be fine that's cool yeah i always freak out about scratching my watches bro yeah yeah they scratch pretty easily especially the metal ones you brush them against oh yeah the aps they scratch like easily you touch it on a table it's scratch i'm like are you serious yeah it's because it's polished it's fine it's very very fine polish and it's like the they thin out the metal so much to where it's like almost flawless yeah so that's why every little scratch literally what's the most you've spent on a gym he's a negotiator bro you don't spend why you walked out of here um he was 150 i gave him ten dollars get out of here i don't know like tens of thousands okay yeah yeah that's still a lot for a job man yeah but you know you're gonna move it like or do you

like how often are you churning inventory so that's the thing some some gems that you could sit for years wow yeah that's it's like if i was turning it over every every year i would be you know on a yacht right now but uh it's yeah it's like it's the type of like gemstones especially it's the type of thing that it can sit for a while because the the way the kind of gemstone industry works it's kind of uh it's a very it's a unique business where we and diamonds are kind of similar to where like we're a wholesaler right so retailer comes to me and be like they're like hey i have a customer for a two carat rub. And I'm like, okay. So I loan it to them. I have to trust them that they're not going to screw me over.

I loan it to them. They show their customer. If their customer wants it, then they pay me. So I loan it to them. That's why it's an industry that's just built on trust. You know, it's like, and there are a lot of good eggs that go bad. But yeah, like you need to have solid references. You have to have a good reputation.

You have to do many years. There's certain credit limits that you set with certain people. Wow. And yeah. So it's a business just built on reputation and trust. Why should people buy a gym over, not technically over a diamond, but why would you suggest a gym per se a diamond like they were in a shopping website like what's your why should people buy gyms i just think they're

more fun i don't know they're they're unique it's like uh you know just throwing some color into your life you know it's like i i like the color blue like i'm wearing like a there's a tiny blue sapphire in here but um yeah i don't know it's it's personal preference if someone prefers the look of a diamond they could go for that if someone prefers you know if you want something to match your hat you can wear like a ruby in your pinky you know yeah just fun all the I've learned a lot about gems today man i appreciate it yeah of course any closing comments uh follow me on the socials gemstones baby yeah no it's uh yeah no it's it's a fun industry like uh yeah i love what he's doing man yeah his youtube negotiations inspire me bro they get me hyped up

yeah i'm trying to go to garage sales right yeah do it uh thank you guys for tuning in make sure you follow me on instagram at the creator don't forget thanks for tuning in guys digital social hour see you next time peace