Now that “Pawn Stars” and the Harrison family have become the hottest things to hit the strip since strip joints, everybody wants to cash in.
Enter TruTV’s new show, “Hardcore Pawn,” a reality show about a suburban Detroit pawn shop that’s roughly the size of Costco — with almost as much stuff. Like a good pawn shop, TruTV wants to trade in on somebody else’s gold mine. Trouble is they’re dealing with stolen goods. The show is a ripoff of “Pawn Stars,” without the charm but with much of the ugly.
The place, American Jewelry and Loan — run by a family called, I swear, the Golds — is 50,000 square feet filled with 45,000 items. Like “Pawn Stars,” the Golds’ emporium is headed by a patriarch, the misnamed Les Gold. With his gold medallion and rings, he should be named More Gold.
Unlike Old Man Harrison, Les is not so quirky as he is unappealing. He’s got greasy, slicked back hair, a black leather sports jacket and skin that’s been tanned to the color of a new penny. Since pawning is a family affair, his grown kids, Seth and Ashley, work in the store with him.
Les describes his son as “the future owner of American Jewelry and Loan,” and his daughter as “the bitch of American Jewelry and Loan.” Enough said.
The show has its share of interesting items that come in. The most popular item in the premiere is a stripper pole complete with shag carpet platform — bring in the disinfectant and bed bug spray! — but the people who try it out aren’t really the kind you want to have over for a beer.
There’s also an obscenity-spewing lady with a bad braid job who goes berserkers because, she says, the Golds lost her earrings. Meantime, she has no paperwork. A big portion of the show is devoted to her yelling, “You no good mother-f- - - - - -,” and Les sagely replying, “f- - -, f- - -, f- - -” back. She threatens that he won’t make it home that night. Like I said, unpleasant.
There’s nothing fun about depressed Detroit or desperate people who have to sell their stuff to feed their kids. We don’t see any of these sad stories, but when you get a look at the parking lot, you know the place is not filled with happy people.
Besides that, a lot of it is clearly set up. For example, a woman comes into the shop with two horses and one donkey to pawn. Talk about a pile of horse manure! That stunt alone was enough to make me feel as used as that stripper pole.
Not a terrible show but, like a used toaster, it’s nothing new.
Copyright 2010 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
A class-action lawsuit filed in California accuses Cash4Gold of “a massive scheme to defraud tens of thousands of consumers.” On its website, Cash4Gold offers to pay fair value for gold jewelry. According to the lawsuit, the company repeatedly “loses” jewelry and claims not to have received it, and often melts jewelry items before the full 12-day return period has ended.
Law firm Balestriere Lanza PLLC filed the lawsuit on October 6 at the U.S. District for Central California against Green Bullion Services LLC, doing business as Cash4Gold. It further claims that Cash4Gold makes it impossible for customers dissatisfied with Cash4Gold’s appraisal of their jewelry to reject the offer and have their jewelry returned to them.
The class action “is the result of an extensive investigation,” said Balestriere Lanza, adding that checks for received jewelry were “systematically mailed too late for customers to request return of their jewelry within the return policy period.”
“The Complaint alleges that Cash4Gold knowingly and deliberately pockets the rewards from jewelry they either claim to never have received or severely undervalue, unjustly inflating its bottom line, and defrauding hundreds of thousands of customers dispersed across the nation,” the law firm states.
Cash4Gold describes itself as “a mail-in refiner, not a jeweler, a pawn shop or a collateral lender.” It states on its website that it has completed over 900,000 transactions to date.
The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
It didn’t take long for the lure of free government money to start taking its toll in the US. I’m already receiving reports from pawnbrokers around the United States who are experiencing an uptick in their pawn loan activity from new customers who drive up to the pawn shop in… you guessed it, a brand-new car. Along with a brand-new payment they had not budgeted for.
Bear in mind, these new pawn loan customers traded in their “paid for” clunker solely because of a government run program doling out taxpayer money, billions in taxpayer money, to induce these unsuspecting customers into an unplanned large purchase strapping them with yet more debt and little regard to the ability to make the monthly payment for the next several years.
If this sounds familiar to you, it should. This type of lending activity in the US is at least partially to blame for our current credit crisis, mortgage bust, and the real estate bubble exploding like a cannon. Will pawnbrokers be able to keep these new car consumers off the repossession list of the lenders? Time will tell, it remains to be seen. But at least for now, the pawnbroking industry will keep these cash for clunkers recipients driving instead of staring at their empty driveway wishing they still had the keys to their paid for clunker.
The World Bank recognized in it’s report, “Key Principles of Microfinance”, that it costs much more to make small loans unless Microfinance Lenders can charge interest rate and fees that are
well above banks. “When governments regulate interest rates they usually set them at levels too low to permit sustainable Microfinance loans” (7) Senate Bill 500/HR 1608, as written, will in effect close the doors on 13,500 pawn/ retail businesses – that means another loss of 100,000
good paying jobs gone forever. The worst effect, it will close the only door 56,000,000 Americans will ever have to make small loans.
Under Senate Bill 500, Section 141.(2) tolerances should define pawn shop owners as micro finance lenders and allow for storage expense of pawned items. Every American has in some way benefited from pawn brokers, whether it was when Queen Isabella of Spain was turned down by her treasury to finance Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the new world and had to pawn her royal jewelry (8) or when we made a $300.00 loan to keep a small lawn service business in operation and off the rolls of the unemployed. Many Americans have never known the need for a $20.00 loan to buy a tank of gas or put food on the table so you can make it to the next payday. We have always had an important role in our country’s micro finance. Pawn brokers as a whole recognize the need for financial reforms, however as the Bill is written it will close down the good along with the greedy.
Anyone with an interest in the United States Bullion Depository, which by the way has not been audited in 50 years, will greatly benefit from taking the time to read this expertly written article.
One of the authors scenarios is:
FORT HOCKS: In this scenario, an audit will show that a significant portion of the citizens’ gold has been mobilized by the Treasury and / or the Federal Reserve; in other words, that it has been hocked at the global financial system’s pawn shop. There are many possible means by which this could have happened; we list only a few.
Could it be that the global financial system is operating its own pawn shop?
Again this week the US President was pushing hard for a new agency that would oversee credit products and require companies to plainly states the terms of financial products, while banning “the most unfair practices” in consumer credit. “We’re going to level the playing field for consumers,” he said. To me, this spells trouble for every source of short-term consumer credit. Why? Because the playing field will never be level. It cannot be. Consumer credit needs are not level. Can we paint the same face on a consumer credit product to finance an automobile as we can for a short-term consumer credit product to provide gasoline for the vehicle? Of course not. But this is exactly what they are attempting to do with all credit falling under the same rules. It will not work.
If President Obama really wants to form The Consumer Financial Protection Agency to oversee credit in the US, the real question is not what the agency will do, but who will do it. If this proposed agency consists of nothing more than bloviating bureaucrats with their pie-in-the-sky Pollyanna view of reality, consumers seeking short-term credit will be forced to unregulated sources or worse. Consumers of short-term credit in the US would benefit greatly by having a pawnbroker on the board of The Consumer Financial Protection Agency being proposed. At least someone would be looking out for the needs of the millions of customers currently relying on short-term credit.
WARNING: This video contains harsh language and is a ridiculous example of what’s wrong with television and the people who crave reality TV. Thank God this is not exemplary of the real pawnbroking industry.
Leave it to Hollywood and these three Las Vegas prostitutes to reinforce every gratuitous negative stereotype of the most civilized form of short-term consumer credit. Fortunately, for every pawnshop operation such as this embellished for prime-time farce, there are dozens of modern family-friendly pawn shop professionals who serve their customers with dignity and run their businesses in a respectable manner. Reality TV has nothing to do with reality. Steve Krupnik
Been interesting watching the news reporting with everyone’s plan on how to fix the current global credit crisis. The pawnbroking industry has been in the spotlight but the real focus lately has been on credit card issuers and payday loan stores. At least this gives the pawnbroking industry the opportunity to take a deep breath and regroup for a minute.
But one story that’s been covered from several angles has had some interesting spins put on it by some credit unions in the US and the US payday lending industry. It seems that several credit unions are now touting a brand-new product for low buck short term loans to help people with low paying jobs or poor credit. And they’re trying to come across as a financial savior.
Yeah, right. Problem is - I’m sure many liberal consumer groups will believe them.
One credit union president was quoted as saying that he’s going to allow these low income poor credit consumers to get off the treadmill. He states that his new short-term small loan product is just the ticket to get these consumers away from the check cashers, payday loan stores, and of course - the pawn shops. Not surprisingly, the payday loan industry does not agree.
The payday loan industry is stating that the credit unions product is nearly identical to the payday loan stores product. In certain cases they are correct. If either one of these industries thought a bit more progressively about what their customer base actually wants in a short-term lending product and what they can actually afford to repay in a reasonable length of time they could come up with a hybrid micro-lending product for consumers that would be far superior to what either one of them are currently offering. Don’t worry - this isn’t going to happen.
Why - because I can guarantee you government will get in the way of such progress.
Funny thing is - government’s been drilling the hell out of just about every short-term high-interest lending product on the market these days, but these are really the only consumer credit lending options available currently to many people around the globe. And what surprises me the most I feel is the fact that nobody is taking on the rent to own industry. At least not yet.
But no matter who they compare in short-term lending products - be it credit cards, payday loan stores, right to own stores, credit unions, or even Uncle Vinnie - no one can compare to the civilized nature of the lending product offered by pawnbrokers. Pawnshops still remain and always will remain the only short-term lenders worldwide who do not create debt for their customers. Pawnbrokers offer the only lending product on the market where the customer has a choice of whether to repay their loans or not. And we are also the only short-term lender who will never ever cause our customer’s credit score to plummet because of unpaid loans.
Whoops - I’m mistaken there. Uncle Vinnie won’t do that either, although he could cause your medical expenses to go up. Not something I would recommend to anyone in need of credit.
Pawnbrokers know how superior a pawn loan is to other forms of short-term credit. So do their customers. But the point here is most people have no idea how much sense pawn loans make in a credit hungry society. Hopefully, by spreading the word, pawn shop owners and customers may just cause the industry to be looked at in a different light.
Because when it gets right down to it the 5000 year history of the pawnbroking industry speaks for itself. Pawnbrokers were practically the only lender out to help the consumer during the Great Depression. The pawnbroking industry is still vibrant and economically relevant in today’s global consumer credit market. While it will never replace the more mainstream forms of consumer credit lending it has proven to be for thousands of years the true financial savior in difficult times.
