Good day everyone and thanks for checking out Off The Handle . Happy Family Day/ Presidents Day. 

Points of interest:

User's Background - 1:36min;

Humble start: reselling bullion on ebay - 4.26min;

Opportunity strikes: transforming from bullion reseller to a mint - 7.00min.

 https://cdn-ceo-ca.s3.amazonaws.com/1g2lj02-bounce+it+interverw+-+%28feb11%29+-+po.mp3


@Vaughan: [00:00:00] Hello everyone, my name is Christopher Vaughan, and welcome to Off The Handle, a show dedicated to uncovering the people behind the handle's in the CEO.CA community.

@Vaughan: [00:00:11] With me today is a user I first connected with about a year ago now, and he goes by the handle @bounceit. @Bounceit's story is an interesting one for sure. When I connected with him, I found out that he was actually a part owner of a private mint in the United States. So that immediately caught my attention. For anyone who loves physical precious metals, @bounceit. Story is one you want to hear, and just in case anyone's wondering, it's through @Bounceit that I got the interview so quickly with the CEO of Scottsdale Mint.

@Vaughan: [00:00:48] @Bounceit. Thanks for joining me today.

@Bounceit: [00:00:51] Yeah.

@Vaughan: [00:00:52] I don't know exactly what time zone you are in personally, but I'm in a very dark time zone at this moment in time and waiting for the next trading day to see what happens in silver. So, I noticed that you joined CEO.CA number of years ago, and I first reached out to you two summers ago now.That's kind of when I got your story and I thought this is a really interesting story and I'd like to get it out there to the community.

[00:01:29] So my first question is, how did you first start investing in the metal space?

@Bounceit: [00:01:36] Well, I guess I started buying silver in 2003. My background is real estate, most of my life I did real estate investments and development. I've pretty much done everything there is to dabble in with real estate. Back around 2003-05 I started to figure out that the economy was looking like it's going to go off the rails. I thought it might be smart to get into precious metals.

@Bounceit: [00:02:04] So I bought some silver and a couple of years later, I actually got on a website called Smart Investment. It was like a mini CEO.CA, just a small group of guys. I met a bunch of people on that site, including Josh my partner in Scottsdale Mint. So, yeah, I just started investing in mining stocks and been doing that off and on anyway since 2005.

@Vaughan: [00:02:33] And when did you find CEO.CA?

@Bounceit: [00:02:35] Your guess is as good as mine. Two, three years ago I guess. I'm sure I just came across it somewhere online but I don't remember.

@Vaughan: [00:02:43] Well when you're in the mix and you're investing in the space, it's one of the things that's going to pop up on your radar. So let me ask so that our listeners can get a better understanding. You mentioned Scottsdale Mint and your business partner, Josh. When I first reached out to you, I did so because you had mentioned that you were part owner of a mint. I found that wild! I thought that was one of the coolest things I had heard at the time.

[00:03:15] So my question is... I mean, you don't just start a mint, right? You don't wake up one day and say "I'm just going to go out there and buy millions of dollars worth of equipment and start stamping metal coins". So how did this come to pass?

[00:03:30] How did you come to start the mint with Josh?

@Bounceit: [00:03:33] Well, Josh and I had we met online., and we were both on a trip to a Gold Canyon REE property in Nevada. Josh and I both were in Reno with a group of about fifteen people who went up to see it on a bus trip. We flew to Reno and took the bus to the property. So that was the first time I met him in person. That was probably like 2006 maybe. /from there we started a couple of businesses that failed (@bounceit laughs) before we started the Mint. But after the financial crisis in 2008, we got the idea that it would be profitable to buy and sell bullion.

[00:04:26] At the time everybody was doing it. On eBay there had to be a hundred little piss ant companies, just an individual buying bars and selling them. Well we did that on eBay and we started a little website of our own. We were just buying bars and our main product that we had were these stacker bars. There was really only one manufacturer that had the equipment to make those particular bars.

[00:04:59] It was really just a small little thing in the beginning. We bought a safe and we put it in a storage facility, and Josh used to go there late at night when no one would see him so we could go inside the unit - We didn't want anybody to see that we had a safe in the unit - and he grabbed the silver. Then he'd have to carry these 70 pound buckets of silver up the stairs to his condo.

@Vaughan: [00:05:28] How many how many flights?

@Bounceit: [00:05:33] I forget I think it was like two flights of stairs. He said he was getting stronger because he couldn't carry only one. It was too off balance. So he had to carry one in each hand and he would take however many steps he could take before dying and stop and rest! So he'd lug them up to his condo where he and his wife we're doing the shipping.

[00:05:57] Well, all those companies on eBay, and I mean there had to be a hundred people doing this, we were the only ones that stayed in business after things slowed down. You know everybody did real well for a couple of years there in 2009-2010, and then when things got a little rougher, everybody just folded up their tent. Which makes sense, do it while you can, but we were just a little more serious about it.

[00:06:27] Josh's background was in the insurance business and specialized in dealing with mining companies. Some things weren't going as well at work and he was thinking that he might like to try to do this full time. Then his employer asked him to relocate. He thought about it and thought about it because it was kind of tough to give up a good job just like that, but he decided he wanted to go for this full time. That's when we got more serious and got an office and branched out a bit.

[00:07:06] Eventually the company that was making the stacker bars, they got bought out by Materion, which is a big company. They make splutter targets and jewellery, or maybe not jewellery but they do a lot with the electronics world, with metals. It was just small potatoes to them to have that bar manufacturing division and they didn't really want it anymore. So we went ahead and bought their equipment and a couple of their employees that worked there came over and that's how we became a mint.

[00:07:34] So you're right, we didn't just wake up one day and decide to be a mint.

@Vaughan: [00:07:39] As we say where I'm from, you fell arse backwards into it.

@Bounceit: [00:07:43] Yeah. Yeah, right, ha right.

@Vaughan: [00:07:44] So you ended up buying the machines, and now my understanding is the Scottsdale Silver Stacker is one of the most popular bars out there.

@Bounceit: [00:07:55] Yeah. Josh thinks it might be the most popular bar in the world. It's up there. A lot of people really, really like that bar.

@Vaughan: [00:08:02] For sure. Actually, I was over in Europe during the height of the beginning of covid, but Scottsdale's products were in all the venues where you could buy. It felt like you guys were kind of following me around.

@Bounceit: [00:08:23] Ha. Yeah we have a lot of countries, a lot of different places that buy from us. It's not just the US.

@Vaughan: [00:08:32] No, definitely not. I'm not going to take up any more of your time. I love your story and basically just wanted to say: Thanks for being on the site. I love seeing people who, though they might not post the most or they might not be the loudest on the site, they are knowledgeable people behind the handle. You're one of those handles that gives me pause and prompts me to say to users " don't just disregard everybody because you haven't heard of them or because you haven't heard their name, because you have no idea who's behind the handle".

@Bounceit: [00:09:20] Yeah, I learned a lot reading reading posts on that site. I mean, you have to figure out who knows what they're talking about. A new doesn't. But but there's a lot of good information on there.

@Vaughan: [00:09:30] Off the top of your head, not to put you on the spot, but is there anybody that you have come to give a certain amount of credit when you're reading their posts? Do you have anybody in particular you follow?

@Bounceit: [00:09:47] Yes, some more than others. I guess I'd have to look back at the names. Some of these guys I know from other places, I can remember if their handles are the same, but I'll read @Dirkdiggler for example. There's a bunch of people, but if you're reading a thread on a stock, you start to know who's done their due diligence on that stock.

@Vaughan: [00:10:10] For sure, I've spoken with Dirk a couple of times. He's a good hand, there's no doubt. All right @Bounceit. I appreciate it and I'll be talking to you soon.

@Bounceit: [00:10:20] OK, great. Chris, thanks.

@Vaughan: [00:10:22] OK. Cheers.