Posts Tagged ‘pawnshop’
Sunday, July 24th, 2011
From Star-Telegram Dot Com
At DFW pawnshops, business isn’t all bright and shiny
By Jim Fuquay
After Michael Meyer got out of the Marines and then Texas A&M University with a degree in history in 2008, he took a career path less traveled: He went to work for an EZ Pawn store.
By January 2010, he put his experience behind the counter to good use when he and his father, Ken, bought an existing pawnshop on McCart Avenue in south Fort Worth. They renamed it Purple Heart Pawn & Gun, a nod to the medal Meyer received after being wounded in Iraq. Now, if conventional wisdom is right, he’s part of a business built for recession, one that becomes supercharged when other consumer markets run out of gas.
Well, not exactly, Meyer says, though there’s no denying that pawnshops are in the spotlight.
They’ve got their own TV show, the History Channel’s Pawn Stars, now in its second season and one of the most watched cable programs, attracting more than 7 million viewers, according to the Nielsen ratings. The show features three generations of the Harrison family that run Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, where they attract plenty of bling and valuable oddities.
On Wall Street, the publicly traded pawn chains, including Fort Worth-based Cash America International and Arlington-based First Cash Financial Services, have become the darlings of investors in the past year, with their share prices more than doubling the S&P 500′s 25 percent gain in that time.
And gold’s long run, which saw it top $1,600 an ounce last week, has helped boost pawnshops. Jewelry makes up a big share of their merchandise, and the higher prices have helped to swell the value of inventory and loans.
Is this a guaranteed counter-cyclical business?
“What the public thinks and what I actually see are not the same things,” said Meyer, 27. “Business is good, but contrary to what people believe, we don’t necessarily do great business when the economy is down.”
“Pawn has two sides, selling and loaning,” said Meyer, who got interested in pawnshops after working at one during his senior year at A&M. “In one instance, our loans are up, we’re definitely making more short-term loans. But we’re selling less.”
At First Cash, which operates 646 outlets, “60 percent of our revenue is retail sales” of pawned merchandise, Chief Financial Officer Doug Orr said. “A lot of our inventory is gold jewelry, and that’s a tough sell in this economic environment.”
And while Cash America and First Cash stock have done well in the past year (as well as shares of Austin-based EZCorp, owner of the EZ Pawn where Meyer got his start), they’ve had their rough spots during the financial crisis. Both Cash America and First Cash fell more than 50 percent by the time the market bottomed out in early 2009, and EZCorp wasn’t far behind.
Even the rise in gold prices is not all positive.
“All it does is increase the competition. Everybody and his brother now buys gold,” said Alton Braxton, manager of Trader Jim’s Pawn Shop in east Fort Worth.
The big chains and the rest
The big chains are certainly doing well financially. Just last week, Cash America and First Cash announced higher revenues and profits.
But that’s not necessarily representative of the business in general.
The publicly traded pawn chains “represent about 10 percent of all pawnshops,” said Emmett Murphy, spokesman for the National Pawn Brokers Association, which moved its offices to Keller three years ago.
“Their business models are more complex,” entailing foreign operations and payday lending that most independent pawnshops don’t get into, Murphy said.
For example, Mexico accounts for the majority of First Cash’s business, two-thirds of its stores and nearly all its growth. And Cash America gets slightly more revenue from payday loans than it does from merchandise sales, and nearly twice as much as from pawn fees.
“Most pawn brokers are mom-and-pops, or small chains,” Murphy said.
If the average pawnshop is a small operation, so are the transactions. According to the association, the average pawn loan in 2010 was about $100, up from $80 the previous year.
Meyer said his average loan is around $100, whereas Orr said First Cash’s average is $170 at its U.S. stores and $70 in Mexico.
‘Workingman’s bank’
Murphy said pawn loans tend to be larger in states that mandate lower interest rates and where more of the merchandise is jewelry. New York state, for example, limits pawn loans to 4 percent a month, plus a $10 service fee.
Texas allows rates as high as 20 percent a month, a rate that’s fairly common. The rate comes down as the loan amount rises, a mechanism also used in other states, including Oklahoma.
For example, Texas’ allowable rate falls to 15 percent a month on loans from $189.01 to $1,260, 2.5 percent on loans from $1,260.01 to $1,890, and 1 percent a month for loans above that.
But Texas pawnshops don’t tend to make many big loans, Meyer said.
“We’re the workingman’s bank, where you can get $60 to get a fill-up,” said Jack Stallings, owner of Texas Best Pawn & Jewelry in west Fort Worth.
There’s some disagreement over whether the customers of pawnshops are changing significantly because of the recession.
“We’re seeing more middle-class people, and even small businesses like restaurants,” Murphy said. Meyer also said he sees some more affluent customers than he did when he first got into the business.
But Dan Feehan, CEO of Cash America, said he doesn’t think pawn customers have changed much. If there’s been a change, he said, it’s in the clientele for the company’s payday loans, which are short-term advances backed by a customer’s postdated check, rather than a piece of merchandise, as in a pawn.
“The theory is that folks have gotten squeezed out of more traditional credit markets,” Feehan said. “But our core customer base” in the pawn operation, he said, has remained fairly consistent.
Tags: consumer credit, Credit Crunch, DFW, pawnbroker, pawnshop, Purple Heart Pawn
Posted in Pawn Ecomomics | No Comments »
Thursday, July 14th, 2011
From TBN Weekly Dot Com
Article published on Wednesday, July 13, 2011
CLEARWATER – Big Tim’s Pawn recently opened its second retail store, located at 1690 Clearwater Largo Road.
Big Tim’s Pawn Clearwater is a 5,000-square-foot store serving residents of Clearwater, Largo and Belleair and adjacent communities six days a week, providing cash loans and retail deals with superior service.
“Opening a Clearwater store is a huge goal for me being a local guy,” said Tim Russell, president and CEO of Big Tim’s Pawn, in a press release. “I graduated from Largo High in ’85 and never could get away from the area I loved.”
According to Russell, his first store opened in 2009 in Pinellas Park. His customers were looking for a more northern county location.
The staff at Big Tim’s Pawn Clearwater has more than 20 years of pawnshop experience.
Big Tim’s Pawn is committed to improving the Pinellas County community by sponsoring local police and high school events like the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Athletic Program and the Northeast High Cross Country program.
Copyright © Tampa Bay Newspapers: All rights reserved.
Tags: Big Tim's Pawn, Clearwater FL, consumer credit, Pawn Loans, pawnbroker, pawnshop
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Tuesday, July 12th, 2011
From Go Banking Rates Dot Com
Are Pawn Shop Owners the True U.S. Economists?
By Casey Bond
Just about every industry took a hit from the recent recession and most businesses are still struggling to rebound. That is, except for pawn shops. Interestingly enough, they have actually been on the upswing ever since our economy took a turn for the worse. In both the good times and the bad, however, pawn shop owners are down in the trenches with their customers–typical Americans like you and I–which may give them the most authentic and uncensored look into the true state of our economy.
So if you’re wondering whether the U.S. is really on its way toward economic recovery or if we’re doomed to keep our belts tightened for years to come, you might want to visit your local pawn shop to get the real answer.
How Pawn Shops Work
Once viewed as a seedy location to unload stolen goods and hock valuables for gambling money, pawn shops have been cleaning up their image and becoming the go-to among middle- and even upper-class Americans for discounted goods and small loans.
Their new found popularity has even sparked a wave of reality shows, including the History Channel’s Pawn Stars, in which viewers can watch the shop’s employees haggle over everything from Superbowl rings to buried treasure. But a pawn store can provide much more than mindless entertainment and there’s plenty these establishments have to offer the everyday consumer, too.
Here’s how a pawn shop operates: Let’s say you need a loan, but don’t have the credit or bank account necessary to get one (or you simply want an alternative). You can take a valuable item you own to a pawn shop and offer it up as collateral. The pawnbroker will then lend you however much he or she deems that item to be worth. You both agree on a term–usually, 30 days–after which you come back to repay the money, plus interest, and have the item returned to you.
Now what if you can’t pay back your loan? The pawn broker can put your valuable item up for sale in their shop with the goal of selling it to recoup the money they loaned you (and hopefully make a profit). You don’t get reported to the credit bureaus or end up with bill collectors on your tail, you just give up the item you pawned.
You can also sell items to a pawn shop if you’re interested in straight cash rather than a loan. These days, a lot more people are interested in both.
Living in a “Pawn Shop Economy”
While there are more than 13,000 pawn shops throughout the country, they are mostly small, privately-owned businesses that do not report their earnings publicly. That makes this industry extremely difficult to track. Even so, the three publicly-traded pawn companies have recently reported significantly increased earnings.
For an industry that thrives on making short-term loans and selling goods at a discount, it’s a strong indicator of the financial times in which we live.
However, it isn’t just an increase in profits that has contributed to the idea pawn shops serve as an economic barometer. Pawn shop employees get a first-hand look at current trends in consumer borrowing and spending, as well as various industry ups and downs.
“We went through two solid years where we had an increase in loans. And I could see the construction business grinding to halt by all the tools on my sales floor,” explains Westside Pawn manager, Susan Sherrod.
A more affluent crowd has been coming through pawn shop doors to join the usual suspects these days, too, hoping to pawn and sell nicer stuff. As Pat Schneider writes for The Cap Times, “unlike payday loan stores, which have the feel of banking branches, a pawn shop’s eclectic mix of items and their owners offers a dramatic window into life during the economic downturn.”
Pawn Shops Serve as Alternative to High-Interest Payday Loans
Payday loans have become much more popularized as a result of the recession, which left a huge number of people with reduced or no income, increasing the demand for short-term loans. Unfortunately, it also left these same people with damaged credit. Combined with tightened lending standards, it has become harder than ever to obtain a loan.
So it’s pawn shops that have come through to serve the needs of the unemployed, unbanked and otherwise down and out.
Additionally, pawn customers can enjoy the fact that there isn’t any credit check involved in getting a loan, and if the loan can’t be repaid, there are no long-term repercussions. Not to mention, it’s hard to obtain a loan for $60.
So whether you’ve hit hard times and need some cash or are simply interested in the fate of the U.S. economy, you may find that what you’re looking for isn’t at a big bank, but the local pawn shop.
Casey Bond has a long professional history in the finance industry. She worked as an assistant in a successful financial planning firm for many years while obtaining her B.A. in English. She then went on to obtain a degree in Publishing and was eager to change career paths.
That’s when Casey joined the Go Banking Rates team, ready to meld her interest in finance with her passion for writing. Now she strives daily to bring readers the most compelling and topical banking information while battling a personal addiction to shoes and handbags. She is making progress and takes it one day at a time.
Tags: consumer credit, Economic Indicator, Pawn Loans, Pawn Stars, pawnbroker, pawnshop
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Tuesday, July 5th, 2011
From FW Daily News Dot Com
By Dennis Nartker
KENDALLVILLE — With the proliferation of reality TV shows like the History Channel’s “Pawn Stars,” pawn shops owners are seeing an increase in customer interest.
When there’s an economic downtown and people out of work, pawn shops are also busy.
“Our business has been steady, but tax time and Christmas are the busiest times of the year,” commented Kendallville Pawn Shop manager Ken Gohn. The shop at 211 N. Main St. has been open for about 10 years. “People need money to live on and they have items they want to pawn but not sell.”
Holly Boyd, owner of Money Source, Inc., a pawn shop at 635 N. Wayne St. in Angola, said she’s seen an increase in people coming into her shop to see what items are for sale as a result of the popularity of the TV show.
How it works
Pawn shops operate much like the Harrison family’s Gold and Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas featured on “Pawn Stars.” Pawnbrokers offer secured loans to customers with personal property used as collateral. Pawnbrokers make their money from the interest they charge for the loans every 30 days. If the customer doesn’t return to claim a pawned item within 90 days, then it becomes the pawnbroker’s to sell. “We much prefer people come back and pick up their stuff,” said Boyd. “We have to fix it, if it needs fixing, and market it and display it to sell it.”
Entering the Kendallville Pawn Shop is like entering any retail store with various items arranged on shelves and in display cabinets. Most of the items for sale are used and either pawned by customers who failed to return for them in the specified time period or sold them to the pawn shop.
“Our most popular items pawned are jewelry, electronics, video games, power tools, musical instruments, sports equipment,” said Gohn. Boyd said she doesn’t loan money on “junk,” but she will consider a pawn on just about anything.
Pawnbrokers will also purchase items. If it’s used, the Kendallville Pawn Shop takes 40 percent off the top because its used, said Gohn.
Boyd’s shop is located in a former McDonald’s Restaurant building that has big windows and a display area that was the restaurant’s play area for kids. “We have a lot of stuff for sale,” she said.
Pawnbrokers assess an item for its condition and saleability by testing the item and examining it for flaws, scratches or damage. An electrical item is more saleability if it works. A customer may offer an item to pawn that is difficult to sell, and the pawnbroker will probably turn it down or offer a very low price. A surfboard is not easy to sell in Kendallville, for example.
They must also consider supply and demand for an item’s saleability. He may have too many car stereos and the market is saturated so he will only accept higher quality stereos.
Gohn and Boyd must also factor in his overhead costs such as staff costs, insurance, utilities. They must take into account all the risk factors and costs. If the customer fails to return for a pawned item, the pawnbroker must sell it and make a profit. If a customer brings a 42-inch TV set he purchased new for $1,000 to a pawnbroker, he may only get a $100 or $200 loan.
Gohn admitted he must be knowledgeable about the markets for the items he accepts, and make use of catalogues, guidebooks and the Internet sometimes when assessing value. He must also be a “people person” so he can determine the likelihood a customer will pay the interest and return to reclaim the item. “I’ve got one lady who’s probably pawned hundreds of items. She’s always come back to collect her items,” he said.
By Indiana law pawnbrokers must keep records of their customers and transactions. Pawnbrokers must be licensed and must keep sales records for two years which include the bill of sale, description of item and the seller. “We’re audited by the state,” said Gohn.
The Kendallville Pawn Shop requires a signature, right thumb print and photo of its customers. This helps in cases of stolen items. Pawnbrokers assume the risk of accepting stolen items so records of customers and transactions are essential. This will allow police to track down stolen items and help identify suspects.
Gohn related the time an 18-year-old boy came into the shop with two fishing poles and reels worth $250 each. Gohn bought the items, and the next day the same boy came into the shop with four more high quality rods and reels. “I remembered reading in the paper about $2,000 worth of fishing equipment stolen in a burglary and I called the police,” said Gohn. Police used the shop’s records to locate the suspect. The fishing gear was returned to the owner, and the shop got its money back from the court-ordered restitution.
When asked about usual items people have pawned, Gohn said his shop has accepted motorcycles, four-wheelers, automobiles even a motorhome.“I had one guy come in with 20 pounds of dog food he wanted me to buy,” Gohn laughed.
Boyd has a license to buy and sell guns. Shotguns and rifles can be pawned but not handguns. “I can tell when it’s hunting season because customers with shotguns and rifles on pawn come in to get them,” she said. “I had 20 bows on pawn, and when bow hunting season came around, all the customers came and got them.”
Tags: Angola IN, consumer credit, Kendallville IN, Pawn Loans, pawnbroker, pawnshop
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Thursday, June 23rd, 2011
From Triangle Dot Dbusinessnews Dot Com
Bob Moulton named 2011 National Pawnbroker of the Year by the National Pawnbrokers Association…
Bob Moulton, owner of National Pawn, was named the 2011 National Pawnbroker of the Year by the National Pawnbrokers Association (NPA) on June 15, 2011 during the organization’s annual convention. Moulton’s clean, bright business model and his generous contributions to the community were cited in the presentation of the honor. Last year the title holder was Rick Harrison, of “Pawn Stars,” fame.
“I am proud to be a pawnbroker, and I am very proud to receive this recognition from the national association of my peers,” said Moulton. “I have made it a priority to improve the image of the pawn industry one customer at a time.”
“Bob Moulton is a fine example of a modern, professional businessman in an industry that suffers from an outdated image. Bob has built a fine reputation on providing service and values to his customers, and is a leading innovator in the nation for changing the face of the pawn business” said Dave Crume, President of the National Pawnbrokers Association. ”We are proud to have him as a member, and we are very pleased to award him the much deserved honor of the 2011 Pawnbroker of the Year.”
In addition to operating eight National Pawn stores in Raleigh, Durham and Wilmington, Moulton believes in giving back to the communities where he does business. He gives generously, and funds many philanthropic efforts from providing cash donations and electronic entertainment devices to Duke Children’s Hospital, to endowing annual scholarships for Triangle students and providing musical instruments to area middle school band programs.
About National Pawn
National Pawn (www.PawnDeals.com) has been serving customers since 1987. With eight stores throughout the Triangle and Wilmington, National Pawn is an industry leader. The company has grown thanks to the tens of thousands of satisfied customers. The professionals at National Pawn pride themselves on offering exemplary customer service.
Tags: Bob Moulton, National Pawn, National Pawnbrokers Association, Pawn Loans, pawnbroker, pawnshop
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Monday, June 20th, 2011
From Newsweek Dot Com
It’s a Hot Time to Be a Pawn Star
Hocking your diamond ring used to be shameful business.
Now everyone’s doing it.
by Gary Rivlin
To gauge the state of our economy, you could talk to the economists and other so-called experts. Or you could attend the annual pawnbrokers’ convention, as I did, held last week at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. There, I met Lee Amberg, his face sunburned from competing in the annual golf tournament that these days opens every Pawn Expo.
A 23-year industry veteran with a pair of pawnshops in suburban Chicago, Amberg says he could tell as far back as 2006 that hard times were coming. “Suddenly we saw our demographic expanding,” he says. “We had more customers coming to us from middle-class communities and even upper-middle-class communities. We saw the erosion of the economy before you were even reading about it.”
Except, who listens to a pawnbroker? “We have our thumb on the true pulse of the economy,” Amberg says with a sigh, “but we’re laughed at or ridiculed because we’re in the pawn business.”
These are fat times for the pawn industry—in no small part because these are hard times for much of America. Pawnbrokers are lending money to a new breed of customer—the kind who drives up in a sports car, lugging a large flat-screen TV to hock—and it’s not like their traditional clientele are any better off than they were a few years ago. Pawn is even hot in the popular culture, as reality TV has spawned no less than three shows starring pawnbrokers.
At first glance, the Pawn Expo could have been any trade show of its kind: booths for exhibitors selling their wares (diamond and gold buyers, mainly), breakout sessions for the more studious conventiongoer (“10 Successful Steps to Becoming a Watch Guru”), boozy parties at night. And the brokers—1,300 attendees in all—made for a friendly, casual bunch, dressed in resortwear for the 100-degree Vegas heat. Still, most people think of the corner pawnshop as a forbidding place, dingy and depressing and smelling something like their grandmother’s attic. “I would describe image as our biggest challenge,” says Kevin Prochaska, who took over as president of the National Pawnbroker Association at this year’s meeting.
But changing that image is no easy task for these lenders of last resort. “If someone is coming to us, that’s the definition of a bad day,” a pawnbroker named Kathy Pierce told me. Apparently, there have been a lot of bad days for the people living near the two stores she and her husband own in central Illinois. The loan volume at both “is higher than it’s ever been,” she says.
If you’re a fan of the hit show Pawn Stars, you might think that what pawnshops mainly do is buy used stuff. But the vast majority are really loanmakers: that watch or wedding ring (usually the same watch or ring hocked the last time) serves as collateral for a loan that usually lasts from a few weeks to a few months. The amounts borrowed are typically small—$100 or less, just enough to make ends meet until the next payday. Four out of every five customers successfully pay off their loan and retrieve the item they’ve hocked.
But a pawn loan isn’t cheap. The fees charged work out to an annual interest rate of between 50 and 250 percent a year, depending on the state. Prochaska, the association president, defends the high interest rates by noting that “a lot of overhead goes into every loan.” That’s because pawnbrokers must store whatever a customer brings in—jewelry, mostly, in big cities, but plenty of weed trimmers, fishing poles, and power tools in less-urban areas. And there’s no guarantee that the pawnbroker will ever be able to sell the items if the borrower defaults. For some pawnbrokers, the sale of forfeited items has accounted for half their revenue, and a lousy economy means they get stuck with more inventory.
Yet for most pawnbrokers, the spike in loan volume over the past few years—and the corresponding increase in the fees they collect—has more than made up for the decline on the retail side. “It’s an awesome time to be in the lending business,” says Nancy Martin, a pawnbroker from North Carolina who has had her own shop since 1981. “Whether you’re talking about our traditional customers or the new people coming in the door, people are really hurting.”
Tags: consumer credit, Economic Indicator, Gary Rivlin, Las Vegas, National Pawnbrokers Association, Pawn Loans, pawnbroker, pawnshop
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Friday, June 10th, 2011
From Wallet Pop Dot Com
Groupon Founders Get Into Online Pawn Shop Biz
By Barbara Thau
The founders of the nation’s biggest daily deal, group-buying site are getting into the pawn shop business.
Groupon founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, who now run investment firm Lightbank, have partnered with online pawnbroker Internet Pawn to launch Pawngo, an online pawn shop.
The site aims to redefine the old fashioned brick-and-mortar pawn shop in the online space by offering customers “a more practical and affordable option to credit card loans and payday lending to get cash quickly without going into debt,” the company announced in a statement.
Pawngo customers can use the gold, jewelry, watches and valuables they own as collateral to secure a short-term loan. Similar to a traditional pawn shop, customers are also offered the option to sell their valuables for a slightly larger amount without interest payments.
“Financing from Pawngo can help fill gaps in cash flow, [helping consumers] pay for emergency purchases like major auto or home repairs or braces for a child,” Lightbank said in the statement. “Once you’ve paid back the loan, your items are shipped directly back to you quickly and safely.”
Here’s where Pawngo differs from traditional pawn shops: The site offers loans based on an item’s current market value for up to six months at 3% to 6% monthly interest rates — a better deal than brick-and-mortar pawn shops, which can charge as much as 20% interest per month, Lightbank added.
What’s more, Pawngo customers can nab a loan ranging from $250 to up to $100,000 in 24 hours — no matter the state of their current finances or their credit history, the company said. And because the transaction is done online, the pawn shop process is discreet and private.
Indeed, Pawngo appears to have set out to rehabilitate the pawn shop’s sordid image for the online space. The Pawngo system “eliminates the intimidating feeling walking into a brick-and-mortar pawn shop in a seedy part of town,” the company noted in its statement.
Here’s how the site, which has yet to officially launch, works:
Customers go on to Pawngo.com and enter a description of the item or items, send a digital photo of the piece — if available — and enter their contact information. No credit card information or Social Security number is required. Pawngo will send the customer a preliminary loan offer or buy estimate within a few hours.
If the customer accepts the offer, Pawngo users can print an overnight, pre-paid FedEx shipping label to send the item directly to Pawngo’s evaluation lab. Once the item has been received, a Pawngo representative will contact the customer with an exact item evaluation and an offer. If the customer accepts the offer, their item is kept in Pawngo’s vault, and the site wires the customer money to their bank account.
The launch of Pawngo is clearly a sign of the times, Craig Johnson, chairman and CEO of retail consultancy Customer Growth Partners, told WalletPop. The economic downturn, Johnson says, has put that many more people into the “low income or temporarily low income” category, people who could find that this new service is just what they need to get them past the rough spots.
Tags: consumer credit, Groupon, Internet Pawn, Pawn Loans, pawnbroker, Pawngo, pawnshop
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Monday, June 6th, 2011
From NY Times Dot Com
A Real Economic Meltdown
By ROBIN ROMM
Portland, Ore.
JOSH OLLER sits me down in the conference room of Silver Lining, a pawn shop in northeastern Portland. It’s a Monday and only 10 a.m., but already three lines are forming at the loan windows. At the front, a woman in a colorful windbreaker and hot pink pants leans on her elbows on the counter. A man in a long black trench coat waits patiently behind her with a guitar.
Mr. Oller runs Silver Lining with his father, Earl. While we talk, a painting of Earl, made to look like Elvis, watches us from its black velvet canvas. The son has a sedate manner, his calm blue eyes set off by a faded navy polo shirt.
He didn’t think he’d go into pawning. He aspired to a career in federal law enforcement. But after he graduated from college, a longing to remain in Oregon, near family and forests, made him reconsider. “It’s a good business,” he says. “Every day is different. You never know what’s going to come through the door.”
The economic downturn has, according to Mr. Oller, brought more middle-class customers to the loan windows. But the real change in pawning has to do with the skyrocketing price of gold. With gold at $1,500 an ounce, pawnshops are making easy profits by buying gold jewelry and selling it to refineries. For sellers, those gold cufflinks languishing in a jewelry box might now cover several weeks’ worth of groceries.
Even gold dust has become worth pursuing. Inspired by stories he’d heard of people boiling the carpets in old jewelry manufacturing buildings to recover remnants of precious metals, Mr. Oller installed a special sewage filtration system in his shop. Now, after employees work with jewelry, they can wash their hands — those tricky crevasses in the knuckles and under their nails — without throwing money, literally, down the drain. Silver Lining’s sewage sludge is collected, dried, baked and burned. “It’s gross,” he admits. But from hand-washing water, he said, the shop collected about $1,000 last year.
Mr. Oller takes me on a tour of the store, including its maze of storage rooms filled with the traditional pawn loot: electronics and guns. But I have a passion for old junk and we both perk up in a low-ceilinged room holding objects that defy categorization.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to a small turquoise trunk. It holds a ventriloquist’s dummy. I desperately want to look at it, but Mr. Oller has moved on to a 100-year-old bottle of Kentucky whiskey. “How much did you loan for that?” I ask.
“Probably 50 bucks,” he says. And then there are the items for which it’s nearly impossible to name a price, like the miniature but functional cannon made out of brass.
When we finish the tour, I find myself drawn to the jewelry cases. It’s hard not to imagine the sad stories behind the diamond rings sitting there — love soured, jobs lost. But I steel myself to see if there’s any gold vintage jewelry, the kind I wear and love. The absence of this — of any gold jewelry — is notable.
Most days I wear a gold Victorian lion pendant that my boyfriend got for me when I sold my first book. I’d long admired it in the window of an estate jewelry store in Berkeley, Calif., where I was living at the time. The impeccably made lion holds a little diamond shard in his fierce mouth. His eyes shine with ruby beads. His whiskers grow from tiny specks beneath his perfectly carved nostrils. I love to think about where he came from, and whom he will belong to after I’m gone. I hate to think — in fact, can’t bring myself to think — of his horrible end if I pawned him. Straight to the scrapper, he’d go.
When I say the fate of all the gold jewelry seems sad, Mr. Oller shrugs. “Gold’s just a commodity, like grain,” he says.
From a pawnbroker’s perspective, this outlook makes sense. Regular customers can no longer afford gold jewelry, and so pawnbrokers stand to make more selling it all to refineries. But I think of my grandmother’s filigreed earrings and my lion pendant, both antique pieces made with great care, now part of my own history. I imagine these objects melted into bars and sold on the open market — to China, to Russia. It’s unsettling.
For a while I wonder whether I can set up a little booth in front of the pawnshop and convince people to sell their antique jewelry to me instead, to save it from its fiery end. But this would probably be illegal, financially suspect … maybe even insane. I settle on hoping that some people, despite this extended recession, can afford to keep their heirloom earrings and cufflinks, medallions and lockets — those little pieces of our human history, sentimental and unrefined.
Robin Romm is the author of “The Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeks.”
Tags: consumer credit, Gold Prices, Pawn Loans, pawnbroker, pawnshop, Portland OR, Robin Romm, Silver Lining Pawn
Posted in Pawn Shop Stories | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 20th, 2011
From Fox News Dot Com
‘Pawn’ Star Says Tough Credit Helping Pawn Industry
By Hollie McKay
Published May 19, 2011 | FoxNews.com
People love a good bargain, and shows about good bargains.
Audiences can’t get enough of History’s reality series “Pawn Stars,” which details the modern day madness behind one the world’s most ancient forms of trade.
“I always wanted to be a pawn broker because I always bought and sold stuff,” Rick Harrison, owner of the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, and star of the leading cable series told FOX411’s Pop Tarts. “(And I’m proud) that it is a good family show. I hear from moms all the time that it is the only show their whole family can watch together.”
But being family-friendly does require some slight modifications.
“The most bizarre thing I ever got was some really, really erotic art – it was about 250 years old from Japan,” he said. “I bought it because there is a market for it, but it’s a pretty difficult sell because it’s not like I’m going to display it in my store as my mom comes in and she really wouldn’t approve!”
But now that Harrison is a household name in many American homes, others are trying to use his business dealings to strike up their own fifteen minutes of fame.
“My biggest pet peeve is when people come in but don’t really want to sell anything; they just want to get on camera. It happens a few times a week,” he said. “We chat and I end up saying, ‘this item is really cool, I would love to film with it,’ and they’ll say, ‘well, I don’t want to sell it. I just want to be on TV.’ It gets really annoying, I tell them that’s not cool, and they won’t be on TV now.”
Time wasters aside, television exposure certainly has its upside.
The star pawnbroker told us that the store has now become quite the Sin City tourist attraction, bringing in a few thousand customers on a daily basis. Moreover, Harrison is also using his far-reaching platform to debunk the many negative connotations that have come to surround pawn shops over the past few decades.
“It’s an odd business, but for some reason if you see something on television about a bad pawn broker, everyone thinks all pawn brokers are bad. We’ve been vilified by Hollywood,” he said. “But back in the 1950’s, pawn shops were the number one form of consumer credit in the United States.”
But as a result of America’s weakened economy over recent times, the pawn industry is steadily becoming stronger.
“Congress has passed a few laws that have been making it harder for people to get credit, so it is making people come back to pawn shops, which is pretty good for me,” he enthused. “But my pawn shop is a lot different to most you’ll see. Not every pawn shop has Picassos on the wall.”
The popularity of “Pawn Stars” and the concept of showing Americans that old trash can be turned into treasure has since paved the way for a new History channel spin-off, “American Restoration,” in which Rick Dale of Rick’s Restorations in Vegas turns customers beloved and oddball artifacts into collectibles that look like new.
“People are passionate about this not only because of the economy but because they want something that makes them happy, a little boost, and by restoring their memory or family history I can do that,” Dale told us. “People want to restore things because they want to remember themselves.”
Furthermore, Dale – who is called on by a slew of stars including Christian Slater and Dick Clark to revive their goods – is trying to encourage viewers to buy U.S.-made products.
“We need to build America back up and I want to do it one piece at a time,” Dale said. “You can see how these old products last through and through, and what you’re buying today that isn’t built here in the U.S. is poorly made.”
Having brought back to life everything from beer machines and bicycles, to 1950’s diners and go-karts, Dale has discovered at least one key tool he now couldn’t live without.
“Nail polish remover,” he added. “It strips paint. It’s funny because in construction you use acetone to take paint off walls… so it is probably not good for your skin.”
“Pawn Stars” airs Mondays at 10/9c, and “American Restoration” airs Fridays at 10/9c
Deidre Behar contributed to this report .
Tags: consumer credit, Las Vegas, Pawn Loans, Pawn Stars, pawnbroker, pawnshop
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