Anthill Garnets & Glorious Gold

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Okay, on with the show.

Well, let's just get to it.

You called us.

Yeah.

And tell me why.

Well, I started listening to the dream a long time ago with the first season just because of like personal family connections to MLMs.

And I'm always just like fascinated by the psychology behind it.

Say more about that.

My mom was in Amway

when we first moved to the United States.

It was like the whole thing.

She went on the journey, never actually making any money at it, of

but always kind of believing in that story that they were selling.

The American Dream.

Exactly, exactly.

Why did your parents move here, if you don't mind me asking?

Oh, not at all.

It was definitely that like idea of the American Dream.

You know, like Lithuania regained independence from the USSR in 1991.

And, you know, the economy is like doing a lot better now, but it was really slow to recover.

It was definitely like this idea of you can accomplish anything in America, like money grows on trees kind of thing.

And then some jerk was like, triamway.

Yeah.

This lady looks susceptible.

Yeah, you know, I think.

Like many people, it was, you know, probably well-intentioned and my mom just kind of really bought into it.

They used to like have the cassette tapes

back

of like, you know, the success stories and everything.

And she would listen to them in the car.

And that's where they make most of their money.

Yeah, exactly.

And the conferences and stuff, you've touched on that too.

Yep.

You know, I totally get it.

It's what we had been told for so long.

And it took me a really long time to kind of deconstruct that idea of the American dream and realize, like, kind of see through all the muck.

And when I heard the episode with Charlotte Palermino,

who I really like follow for my skincare stuff,

I was like, oh, we could do something similar for jewelry, you know, where it's like there's all this misinformation out there, or like people don't have a deep understanding of it because it's so complex.

Well, let's give it to them.

Yeah.

My name is Anna Brazlitite.

I'm originally from Lithuania, but you know, I've lived in the U.S.

for a long time now.

And I'm currently a jeweler and sustainability consultant and educator in the Bay Area.

I'm jealous.

I love jewelry.

Tell me how you got into that.

Yeah, I got into it as an elective in college.

I actually went to school for photography and just happened upon metalworking and just really enjoyed the hands-on nature of,

you know, in comparison to photography.

It was really, really hands-on.

Yeah.

What kind of stuff do you make?

Yeah, I'm mostly focused now on

kind of custom bespoke work.

So I do a lot of engagement rings and wedding bands, but I make a variety of things.

You know, I've had

people request like anything custom that they can imagine we can kind of craft together.

And it's all fine jewelry?

Yeah, I'm now working mostly in gold,

focused on fine jewelry.

I started out in kind of more fashion jewelry, working in like brass and silver, and just realized that I didn't like doing the like.

production work where you're kind of making the same things over and over.

And so I really gravitated toward the like custom, fine

end of the sector.

How would you describe your style?

My design style is really inspired by like modern art and architecture.

I'm a really big fan of like the Bauhaus movement.

I went to art school in Chicago.

So the Institute of Design was like all those photographers there, big inspiration.

And yeah, I like a really clean, like geometric, asymmetrical aesthetic.

So that's not all you do.

You said you have another kind of hustle.

Can we talk about that?

Definitely.

I've been a sustainability consultant as well.

So I've been working with a small consultancy called Christina T.

Miller Sustainable Jewelry Consulting.

It's a mouthful.

We call it CMC for short.

So at CMC, we focus on

helping other jewelry brands on their sustainability programs, develop their sustainability programs.

And oh, I'm looking at your stuff right now and I want it.

I want the vintage interlocking hearts ring, Dan.

Oh my God, isn't that so cute?

Yes.

So that's another thing that I also do.

So I make my own jewelry, but then I also curate a vintage collection because sometimes I have crisis of conscience where I'm like, and why am I making more jewelry?

Wow.

Okay.

This stuff is great.

I love your drawings too of the like custom stuff that you've done.

Anyways, okay, sorry.

Now I'm just like shopping.

Yeah, I do this mix of like

newly made and vintage just because being like a sustainability minded person in my everyday life too, I like sometimes just think about our consumption habits and I'm like, why am I making more new things when there's already so much jewelry out in the world?

But I always come back to like, I love making just the art and craft of it.

So I don't know.

I kind of just found a balance of those things.

The sustainability effort in jewelry is what?

Where's that coming from?

Yeah.

Sustainability in jewelry.

For the most part, we focus a lot on the sourcing of materials.

When I think about sustainability in general, I think

of

these like

intersecting areas of not just environment, but also like social and cultural sustainability.

To me,

slow down again.

What's social and cultural sustainability mean?

Okay, when I say the word sustainability, I think most people, like the general public, think of the environment, right?

And

what I want to bring into the conversation when I'm talking about sustainability is the social impacts of

our, like, say, jewelry production, right?

So that we're not just thinking about the environment, but we're thinking about like the cultural and social impacts that

producing jewelry or producing anything has on people.

Can you give me a couple examples?

Yeah, so there's definitely the things that come to mind for people immediately is like the human rights issues.

Blood diamonds.

Exactly, exactly.

That's usually the first thing that comes to mind, right?

Children and minds.

Yes, yes.

And on the other end of that spectrum of those like human rights issues is also like the opportunity to create positive impacts like economically for

communities where jewelry materials are sourced.

Okay.

And I always try to think of it through that lens as well, just because, you know, to be like totally frank, the jewelry industry is built up on colonialism.

And to me, like sustainability and ethics and jewelry has to work to make up for that legacy.

And we can't do that if we're just thinking about the environment.

Like that's important, but we also need to think about like how can these communities who have been historically marginalized and their resources extracted, how can they benefit from those resources themselves?

Is it smart to start with a material and then you can talk about where that comes from and how it gets greenwashed?

Like, can we talk about my favorite, which is yellow gold?

Yes, that is also my favorite to talk about.

So that's perfect.

Okay, so gold comes to us from a couple different mining sources, right?

So when I talk about mining in any jewelry material, we usually categorize it into two categories.

There's artisanal and small-scale mining and then there's industrial or large-scale mining.

And any material that we mine for can be mined in either capacity.

It's like not super well defined like where the line is between the two, but artisanal mining can be, you know, literally just groups of people in between farming seasons digging in their land for gemstones or, you know, digging pits in the ground for gold mining.

Or it can be like, you know, more organized in like cooperatives, but still I would say a lot more focused on the local population and you know sometimes not very formalized and a lot more like rudimentary tools and more like hand labor and the other one is there's like a robber baron with a whip

I laugh at it now but that is like how it started especially like diamond mining back in the day in south africa that was real it very much was like some white man with a whip.

That was a reality.

And

what it is now, I think, is kind of like a modernized version of colonialism.

It's

these multinational corporations, mostly from the global north, that are extracting resources mostly in the global south.

And, you know, there's exceptions to all of that.

There's companies that do things better or worse.

But to me, it like broadly replicates this like colonialist foundation that the jewelry industry is built upon.

So

gold and any jewelry materials can be mined by either artisanal and small-scale mining, which we sometimes call ASM, or large-scale mining or LSM.

And

what you'll most likely as like the general public or as consumers, you'll see a lot of talk about recycled gold, right?

Well, let's slow down there because I don't know if a lot of people have been introduced to that.

Like where I grew up, there was one jeweler who was like a family-owned jeweler.

And then there was like K jewelers, which I love, by the way.

And you're going to have to tell me why I should stop shopping at the clearance section of K Jewelers, but

I don't know that we all talk about recycled gold.

So what is that?

Okay.

That is a great question.

And like therein kind of lies the problem: is that there is like no agreed-upon definition of recycled gold in the industry.

Okay.

So, there are various industry groups that jewelers, refiners, the people who process the metal and sell it, they're all part of.

And these various groups have definitions that they've decided on for recycled gold.

And they're all a little different, and they

are also all all very broad.

So what some of them say are things like,

you know, recycled gold is gold that has been previously refined and refining is just the process of like taking the ore from the ground and taking out all the impurities, the other minerals that are like found with it.

Well, that's all gold.

Uh-huh.

Oh.

Okay.

So if that has happened once and then, you know, maybe it's refined again or it's just turned into a gold bar that then gets melted down and made into jewelry, like you can call it recycled based on these industry definitions.

It's like calling fruit organic.

Yeah, it like misconstrues the meaning of this really

commonly understood word, right?

Like we hear recycled and we think, you know, this can that I'm drinking out of, instead of throwing it in the garbage, I'm going to throw it in the recycling, therefore less aluminum needs to be mined.

Like that's what we think of when we think of recycled.

And the thing that comes to mind for most people is melted down old jewelry, right?

Yeah.

But like these broad definitions allow for so much other material to be considered recycled that really shouldn't be because recycled should be taking something, diverting it from a waste stream.

And For the most part, gold does not have a waste stream.

And so we're not diverting it from a waste stream.

We're not recycling it in the same way as we think of with other materials, right?

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So

what's the utility in calling something recycled gold if essentially all gold that has been processed

is recycled?

It is the green halo of that word, right?

Like people have a positive association with it.

And that's not to say that anyone who uses like recycled gold is like intentionally greenwashing, right?

There's nothing wrong with using recycled gold.

It's just that people are making the same kind of environmental claims sometimes about recycled gold as you would make about other materials, right?

So if they're saying, you know, using recycled gold reduces the demand for new mining, that's just not true because

gold is still like basically equivalent to currency like worldwide.

Like it might not actually be pinned directly to our currency anymore, but it's so highly valued that it can be used as currency and people still see it as a quote unquote safe investment.

Actually, ever since like the 2008 financial crisis, it has been increasing in price so much

just because people still turn to it as an investment option in like uncertain economic times.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah.

Gold has like really increased in price recently.

And so because of that, the jewelry industry has been using what we're calling recycled gold

really steadily for the past, you know, 10, 15 years at least.

even longer, but kind of focusing on recycled gold as like this quote unquote solution for the past like 10, 15 years at least.

And mining has not decreased at all, you know, because people are going to continue to try to dig this really valuable material out of the ground.

Right.

Well, first of all, is there such a thing that's recycled gold in the way that I, a layperson, imagine it?

Are there companies that are melting down my broken earrings?

Yeah, so that definitely happens.

And I think a lot of smaller, like independent jewelers have a better capacity to do something like that.

Like, especially if you have an heirloom piece or something and you want to bring it to somebody and say, can we melt this down and make something new out of it?

When it comes to

bigger companies and what they call recycled gold, that gold might have a lot of that old jewelry or dental crowns or whatever in it, but it is likely to also have manufacturing scrap that has never been in a product yet.

And

like gold bullion that could have been mined like a week ago.

And they usually just don't have a way to tell because

they're the manufacturers that they're buying from, you know, are buying from specific refiners who process this gold and might not keep track of where it's coming from.

Right.

Or might not want to tell them.

So it's kind of a marketing ploy, essentially.

Yeah.

To say it's recycled it's some it's something it's supposed to give us a feeling yeah about the gold i think it's a marketing ploy when people present it in this like eco-friendly light

it does just automatically have this positive association in our brains because we're so used to something being made with recycled material being a positive thing and

At its best case scenario, it's kind of just the status quo in jewelry because we've been reusing and remelting gold for like thousands of years.

Is anyone trying to make a more distinct definition around, like, is there a push?

It's reminding me kind of of multi-level marketing not being called pyramid schemes, you know?

Yeah, I think like, I have such an interest in like the way we use specific words to describe our work and like, how, you know, that can teeter on the line of greenwashing or not.

And greenwashing for our listeners, can we talk about what that is real quick?

So greenwashing is

basically companies making positive environmental claims in their marketing without being able to substantiate those claims.

Okay.

Greenwashing can be very intentional, but it can happen accidentally too, especially if somebody is new in the jewelry industry, say, and doesn't realize this complexity behind recycled gold.

And they might come into it, you know, with good intentions, thinking they're doing something really positive, but they haven't looked into like, is it post-consumer or not?

Right.

Yeah, I like to make that distinction too, because it's not always totally nefarious,

but a lot of the time it really is.

Like you're just kind of making environmental claims just to get people to buy things.

And there's really nothing to back up those claims.

So the distinction you would like to make is something called post-consumer recycled gold, as opposed to just flatly like blanket recycled gold?

In a way.

Okay, so you asked about the definitions, right?

And so there is actually a group that, a working group that I'm now a part of called the Precious Metals Impact Forum.

And I joined them because they wrote this really clear definition of recycled gold versus what they're calling reprocessed gold.

Okay.

And so how they're defining recycled gold is basically anything that would actually be diverted from a waste stream.

So that would include things like electronics

and things that are actually ending up in landfill.

And if you can, you know, divert them from landfill, reprocess that gold, then yes, great.

Let's actually call that recycled.

And then everything else would just be called reprocessed gold.

Okay.

What's the difference between 24 and 18 and 10 and 9?

9 is a whole thing we can talk about.

Some people have very strong feelings about whether that should be called solid gold or not.

I love 9.

Let's get there.

So let's start at 24.

What's 24 karat gold?

Yeah.

So 24 karat gold is pure gold, like elemental gold with no other minerals mixed in.

Because when gold is found in nature, you know, whatever kind of ore it's found in will have other minerals or other rock, whatever.

Okay.

So when you like take all those other minerals out

and you're left with just the gold particles, like that's 24 karat gold.

That's the kind you can bite into and that like to check if the coin's real.

If your teeth marks are in it.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So because it's that soft, it's not often used for jewelry.

Like usually it's alloyed with other materials.

So an alloy is both the combination of metals itself and it's the process of mixing those metals together.

Basically, it's called alloying.

And so gold is usually mixed with copper and silver, sometimes other things like zinc, to form the different carrot alloys and the different like colors of gold that you'll see.

So are all of those kind of interchangeable?

Or is there a reason you would pick zinc over silver?

Oh, like silver and copper.

Yeah, there's different reasons to use them.

So, like, if you think of rose gold,

it has that like rosy color because it has more copper in it than silver.

I didn't realize, why did I not know that?

I feel stupid.

No, you shouldn't.

Honestly, like, it's a very common question that I get.

There's not that much information out there about like how it's all made, right?

That's part of why I love talking to people about this.

So, when you go from 18 to 14 to 10, what's happening there?

Yeah, so those numbers are parts out of 24.

Okay.

So 18 karat gold is 18 parts out of 24 pure gold, and then the other parts are whatever combination of those other metals.

So is it like a blanket value across all 18 karat gold?

Or does the alloy

matter?

Like which one you choose?

As far as like cost?

Just as far as value.

Like if I have a ring that's mixed with copper versus one that's mixed with silver.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, the gold is so much more valuable than the silver or the copper that that's kind of the only thing that matters.

Okay.

It's like the gold content in your 18 or 14 carat that really like counts as far as what the value is.

And now nine, I thought up until a few years ago that it was illegal in the U.S.

to call something nine carat gold.

So what happened there?

So I do, if I'm remembering this correctly as well, I do think that the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, changed that guideline.

Okay.

Yeah.

So they have this like guidance documentation that's called the jewelry guides, and they kind of lay out all the marketing terms and things that are allowed around jewelry.

And they do, yeah, I do think that they changed that.

I think you're right.

This is the first time anyone's ever explained to me what the carrots mean.

I have no idea.

I'm telling you, it's a very common question I get.

With the pieces that I make and consumer awareness work that I've been focused on, I really like to open people's eyes up to responsible artisanal gold mining.

There are a couple of certifications.

One is called Fair Mind and another one is Fair Trade, which is, you know, the same Fair Trade that has a standard for coffee.

Yeah.

So they have like a gold specific standard which says that like you have to be an adult yes and you must get paid and you yes

and you know they have like environmental considerations in the standards and so there are mines that are smaller scale mines that get certified under these standards so i use fair mind myself do jewelers denote that somewhere like is it on your website yeah so we go to the about page or something to find out Okay.

Yeah.

A couple colleagues and I have also put together like a consumer guide that goes like in depth about gold specifically.

We're going to do other materials as well, but it's called the Better Jewelry Project.

And our goal is to just like raise consumer awareness about how responsible artisanally mined gold can be a tool for

social and environmental justice.

Cool.

Just because it supports the local communities, you know, we pay a small premium when we buy this gold.

It's fully traced from mine to us.

So every step along the way, you keep track of it.

And then that premium goes back into community development to be spent however that community wishes.

You know, if it's social services, if it's environmental, they get to make these community improvements that they really envision for themselves and to really like benefit from that material in their own lands.

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Can we talk about gemstones and diamonds?

Like what's the nicest gemstone?

What's the kindest to the world?

Oh my goodness.

Well, I mean, if I had to pick one, I would maybe say anthill garnets because there are these garnets that are like literally pushed up to the surface by ants.

Ant hill?

Yes.

Garnets from ant hills?

Yeah.

They literally the ants like push them to the surface.

So that's got to be the gentlest.

That's amazing.

It's aren't amethysts also pretty easy to find.

You know, we kind of tend to categorize gemstones into like precious or semi-precious, which is like made up.

And amethyst is just a stupid crystal.

Yeah.

It's like, what does that really even mean?

Like the way we value things is so weird.

You said it's arbitrary?

I mean, mean, some of it is arbitrary.

I think some of it is like

actually because like certain gemstones are very rare.

But some of them are just prettier than others.

And so they get to be precious.

I guess, yeah.

Can you give me an example of that?

Like are opals precious?

Oh, that's a good question, actually.

Sam, this is another one of those gray areas where I'm like, the word precious is not like, perfectly defined in jewelry.

But yes, I would say

a certain quality of opal would be considered precious.

You know, like your, your top, like, quote-unquote precious gemstones would be like sapphire, ruby, emerald, which sapphires and rubies are the same mineral, by the way.

Oh, um, really?

They're just, yeah, rubies are just a specific color of sapphires or of corundum, the mineral.

Okay, I was going to ask, I was like, wait, what is sapphire?

Corundum?

Corundum, yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

So, so rubies are the like red and pink variety of corundum and sapphires are every other color of corundum.

Right.

They come in every color.

Yeah.

I forgot about that.

Okay.

You know, those are kind of like your big, like have been valued for a long time.

What's an emerald?

I'm sorry.

Can we go through the other fine ones?

So there's two sapphires that are precious.

Emeralds are in a family of gems called beryl.

Uh-huh.

And that family of gems also includes, for example, aquamarine, which is like, can be precious, can be less expensive.

Like it's all very like murky and like weird, not perfectly defined things about like how we have come to value certain things because they're pretty, because of their, whatever it may be.

Why are diamonds number one?

Like, how did they win?

How did they win?

The short answer to that is a really good marketing campaign.

Back in the day, like De Beers no longer holds a monopoly on diamond mining, but they did for a very long time.

And they very carefully controlled the flow of how many diamonds they released to make them, you know, have this air of being more rare.

And then also, yeah, just convinced everyone that they needed a diamond engagement ring with a really good marketing campaign.

But, you know, diamonds are also practically, they make sense in engagement rings because they're very hard.

You know, they can only be scratched by another diamond, really.

Is that the same argument for why platinum is used?

We didn't even get into platinum yet.

Oh,

yeah, platinum is more so in the large-scale mining category, which I personally don't love.

But there are also like certifications for large-scale mines that can show that they're doing things responsibly.

So that does exist.

Okay, so diamonds got to be number one because of De Beers.

Basically, that's like, yeah, that's like the, you know, quick and easy answer.

But that is definitely shifting a lot over recent years with like lab-grown diamonds.

Let's talk about those.

Are those nice?

Are those fair?

Are those, I don't even know what the word is.

Are those okay?

Are they okay?

It depends.

Really?

Really?

Yeah, I think that a lot of people want to have like a easy answer.

And I totally understand this as a consumer, like it's so overwhelming.

And you want to just have like a clear-cut answer of like, well, I don't want conflict diamonds.

So like if I just get lab grown, is that, you know, automatically ethical?

Right.

Because the conflict diamonds get easily mixed in with non-conflict diamonds.

Is that correct?

I feel like I saw that and maybe that De Beer's documentary, but it's like, it's harder.

It's hard to trace a mind diamond, right?

Yeah, it's, you know, it's actually probably not very hard to.

It's just that the industry refuses to really do it.

Okay, okay.

But that is true.

Yeah, you're, you're totally right.

That like traceability and that like origin that I've been, you know, talking about is, is just not really there.

The fact that people like think that, okay, it's lab grown, so it's automatically ethical.

I like to like just get people to pause there for a second because it's not necessarily true.

Like, you know, lab grown sounds like really fancy and you're picturing like, I don't know, I used to picture like people in a white coat in a science lab.

But, you know, they're just big factories.

And just like any other factories, there can be human rights issues.

Right.

So just keeping that in mind.

And then on top of that, they take a lot of energy to produce.

And so then it comes down to, do you know, like, what energy source they're made with?

And there are a few companies out there and, you know, again, certifications that show that, you know, this lab-grown diamond is made with renewable energy.

And so while it's not like my choice to focus on lab-grown, if people want a lab-grown stone, I'm like, okay, great.

There's the certification, you know, sustainability-rated diamonds.

Is that what it's called?

Yeah.

Sustainability-rated diamonds.

Yeah, it's from a company called SCS

that has a variety of certifications, but that's their like diamond one.

Also, isn't there mining involved in making lab-grown diamonds?

Like, don't you have to get the carbon from somewhere?

You have to have the carbon from somewhere.

So, yeah, when lab-grown diamond companies, you know, claim mine-free and eco-friendly and they have nothing to like back that up, that's some of the most kind of egregious greenwashing that's happening right now, I think.

Wow.

It's just saying because it's lab-grown, it's better.

Yeah.

That's what I thought.

Yeah.

And I think that's such a common thing.

It's like one of the most contentious topics on like jewelry TikTok, too.

Really?

Can you speak more specifically?

Like, is there an example of a company that's bad in the lab-grown

diamond world or like an example of product that comes out?

I don't know.

It's these companies that

we don't know where the diamonds are made.

We don't know how.

Like the majority of a lab-grown diamonds are still made in China,

which like has actually made a lot of strides with renewable energy, but it's still like 60% coal power.

And, and you know again if you don't know the origin of a lacron diamond like maybe it was made with a whole bunch of coal power

are there any big companies like like let's go back to k-jewelers like am i ruining the planet by shopping their clearance rack um

it's not great it depends again okay okay yeah yeah but they're not like above board on every, you know, I imagined that to be the case.

Well, you know, I try not to like single out specific companies most of the time because

you never really know the inner workings of a company.

Like there could be really great people on their sustainability team that are like really trying to change things, but it's just like a big ship to like change the course of.

Yeah.

But coming back again to that idea of like origin and traceability, if a company doesn't know that about their materials and about their products, like if they don't have that full traceability,

there's no responsibility claims that you can make if you don't know where things are coming from and how they're made.

So like most of those big companies, you know, will have like supplier code of conduct and they audit their factories and they go and make sure that everything is according to their supplier policies.

They often stop there and they will say like, okay, we're using recycled metals, therefore we don't need to go beyond that in traceability.

That's kind of like one of the issues with that recycled lack of definition.

It really obscures the origin.

And then the origin stops at the refinery.

And then the companies have no responsibility for like how that metal reached the refinery.

Will you walk me through from discovery to my ring and my finger right here?

Like what the life cycle of gold?

Yeah.

So it starts as a thing in the ground.

Starts as a thing in the ground.

Someone digs it up out of the ground, whether it's an individual or like a giant machine.

Then some larger mines will have processing facilities on site where they refine it on site.

But most of the time, it's then sent to a refiner.

And a refiner is, you know, basically a factory that does metallurgy, like treats the metals in very specific ways.

And it's great if it's nearby and you don't have to put it on like a cargo ship, right?

Yeah.

Although, you know, almost everything in the jewelry industry is like going all over the world, really.

Okay.

Yeah, it does move a lot.

So let's say you dig up gold in South Africa, then you put it on a boat and it goes to

Could be like Switzerland.

Switzerland.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then it gets refined and turned into like what, like bricks?

Yeah, it could get turned into little bars, ingots.

It depends sometimes on the refiner.

They could turn it into little tiny pieces

that then are sent to a manufacturer of some kind.

So that could be, you know, another factory that makes jewelry, or it could be an individual jeweler, say, who does more of the metal working themselves.

Most often, it's probably going to a factory manufacturer.

And then, you know, that can be either cast, where you melt the metal and you pour it into a mold that is the shape of the jewelry piece you're making

or it can be turned into like different shapes and sizes of wire or sheet that you then it's called fabrication is another way of producing jewelry cut and form and shape wire and solder it together or or sheet and solder it together to construct the piece or it can get smushed really really tiny and put inside of gold schlager

yes

or in uh i was at the store the other day and saw a face mask that had 24 karat gold particles in it i was like wow

oh yeah there's a lot of beauty stuff out there that's like got 24 karat gold can we talk about all the uses for gold that aren't jewelry oh yeah gold and diamonds jewelry's not the only thing and it might not even be the biggest thing right

it's not the only thing but i do actually i do think it's still the slight majority of what gold is used for.

Okay.

So yeah, jewelry, electronics, automotive.

There's what we could call like investment products, like the coins or other little bars.

That makes me think of that Kristen Wigg parody.

Golding your gold, the one that she's like washing her face with gold coins.

Anyway,

I guarantee you'll spend hours caressing your gold,

massaging your gold,

washing your face in gold.

What time is it?

Oh, I know.

Time for you to call Monics and invest in gold.

Call today and tomorrow you'll be enjoying your gold.

Touching your gold.

Actually, like

the majority of all the gold we've mined is just like sitting in bar form in banks somewhere.

Oh.

Yeah.

Oh, so it's like Fort Knox.

Yeah.

That's a thing that people do.

Huh.

That is still very much a thing.

Like, I want one of those.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Or five or ten.

Yeah.

Wouldn't that be great?

Yeah.

Who has them, really?

Is it the jewelers or like the miners?

Who has gold bars?

Like, why would

weird old men who think the end of the world's coming, like my dad?

That too.

But

yeah, the majority of gold is just sitting in a bank somewhere.

But is the bank owning it?

Or it's like people?

Yeah.

Oh, the bank owns it.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

I get it.

I get it.

Yeah.

I have probably two more questions, but my last one really is, what's the deal with moissonite?

Oh, moissonite.

That's the best clone to diamonds, right?

Yeah, it's meant to be like a simulant, right?

So like it simulates a diamond.

Uh-huh.

Better than a CZ?

I guess maybe better than a CZ.

Yeah, it does have, you know, CZs and Moissonites are, yeah, both meant to be like diamond simulants.

moissonites have like a rainbow colored sparkle to them so like the average person like if you like learn a little bit you can usually tell a moissonite and a diamond apart whereas lab-grown diamonds and natural diamonds are like chemically the same right

it is a naturally occurring gemstone but is one of those that is so rare it literally comes from like meteorites and it's so rare that if you find a natural moissonite out there somewhere, it's going to be like exorbitantly expensive.

Then why are they so cheap?

Because the lab-grown versions are really inexpensive to make.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

I didn't even know they did lab-growns.

Yeah, pretty much any moistenite jewelry you see out there is lab-made or fresh.

But if you can find a real one, then you're, it's better than a diamond or more valuable.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Wow.

I had no idea.

It's like a super, super rare stone.

Next time Ana joins us, we'll talk pearls.

Yeah, I'm like, there's probably more things that will come to mind.

It would be a pleasure to chat again if you'd like to.

You'll come back.

Yeah, I would love to.

Okay, great.

Yeah.

Do I get a discount on those earrings that I want?

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