My view of Karma is that if you act in goodness you will receive goodness from others, if you're an S.O.B. doing evil then an S.O.B. will do you an evil.

My son and I have this running argument: he says that if one believes in Karma and is being nice in order to reap some karmic fruit then karma will make sure one doesn't get any benefit. I disagree. I do nice things because I believe it wraps me in "good karma."

Let me give you an example.

Last Monday a woman calls me on my business line asking if we buy porcelain clowns. She gave me a list of the items and I said I would get back to her with an answer. In my business of buying scrap gold I have a number of experts I rely on much like Pawn Stars and so I called my collectible expert who said the clowns she had were worth only two or three dollars each.

Before I could call her back to tell her that it wouldn't be worth her trip into Manhattan she had gotten on a bus and taken an hour ride to my store in Chinatown. So here she comes in, huffing and puffing, an overweight, elderly black woman carrying three shopping bags filled with porcelain clowns.

I looked up the clowns on ebay "sophia ann clowns" and saw a number of her clowns selling for between $6 and $16 dollars.

Let me tell you how I price things in my business. If something sells for ten bucks retail, the wholesale, in general, is about five dollars. If the wholesale is five dollars then the jobber (or manufacturer) selling to the wholesaler pays about $3.50 for the item. I like to buy new stuff if I can pay about 10 percent less than it costs to make the item. For used items cut that in half.

So if a clown sells for $16 dollars I would want to pay five dollars for new or about two or three dollars for a second hand one.