Down here at the pawn shop

Undertoad · 11-13-2012, 09:04 AM

It really depends on what the widget is, because the shop has to hold the item for at least 3 months in a buy, 5 months on a pawn. So we are taking a risk on some items, such as laptops, that the item will not lose value quickly. This is why the pawn shop is not the best place to sell things.

But on average we would probably buy it for $50, pawn it for $20.

My co-worker points out that if a large black man comes in with a iPad and it says "Brittany's tablet" and has a bunch of pictures of white girls at their sleepover, it's stolen. But we can't judge. We don't really know. We may use that kind of information to get a better deal for us and we might just buy it for $20.

What happens then is the person who got robbed files a police report, and the police regularly come around with items and descriptions and ask to see certain things. If they can identify it, the person can come around and buy it back from us at the rate we paid. Cops come around all the time with their lists and the system works pretty well.

First day I worked full time, there was a cop at the door looking for a PA system that a guy robbed from a church. He was positively delighted not only to identify the system, but we had video of the guy who pawned it. The cop took the video on his thumb drive, the items were recovered and the dude was arrested. It turned out he was on parole from being jailed for theft, and now they have a perfect evidence trail of this theft, and a judge will hear that he robbed this from a church and he'll go back in for a long while.

The most pawned item is jewelry. The ghetto folks treat their jewelry as their savings, their emergency money, their safety deposit box. It's good for us because the item is small, and we can quickly evaluate it, do a deal and put it in a massive safe.

We absolutely try to do the best deal for us and there are tricks to getting that done, which I'm learning. The opener is to ask what the person wants. If they have an expectation that their ring is worth $300, because they paid the massive markup at a department store, we often tell them we're not even close because the shop is only in it for the gold. Everything is melted down after 90 days or when it goes out of pawn.

11-13-2012, 09:04 AM	#11
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	It really depends on what the widget is, because the shop has to hold the item for at least 3 months in a buy, 5 months on a pawn. So we are taking a risk on some items, such as laptops, that the item will not lose value quickly. This is why the pawn shop is not the best place to sell things. But on average we would probably buy it for $50, pawn it for $20. My co-worker points out that if a large black man comes in with a iPad and it says "Brittany's tablet" and has a bunch of pictures of white girls at their sleepover, it's stolen. But we can't judge. We don't really know. We may use that kind of information to get a better deal for us and we might just buy it for $20. What happens then is the person who got robbed files a police report, and the police regularly come around with items and descriptions and ask to see certain things. If they can identify it, the person can come around and buy it back from us at the rate we paid. Cops come around all the time with their lists and the system works pretty well. First day I worked full time, there was a cop at the door looking for a PA system that a guy robbed from a church. He was positively delighted not only to identify the system, but we had video of the guy who pawned it. The cop took the video on his thumb drive, the items were recovered and the dude was arrested. It turned out he was on parole from being jailed for theft, and now they have a perfect evidence trail of this theft, and a judge will hear that he robbed this from a church and he'll go back in for a long while. The most pawned item is jewelry. The ghetto folks treat their jewelry as their savings, their emergency money, their safety deposit box. It's good for us because the item is small, and we can quickly evaluate it, do a deal and put it in a massive safe. We absolutely try to do the best deal for us and there are tricks to getting that done, which I'm learning. The opener is to ask what the person wants. If they have an expectation that their ring is worth $300, because they paid the massive markup at a department store, we often tell them we're not even close because the shop is only in it for the gold. Everything is melted down after 90 days or when it goes out of pawn.

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