Down here at the pawn shop

[Undertoad]

About half the people who come in have a story about their item. If they tell us the story before the deal is offered, they are generally lying.

People turn down our offers all the time. And they accept low offers all the time because they want the money, more than whatever it is has gotten into their hands. Our offers are always low, generally about a third to half of what eBay does. If he had the charger, the 4S was clean and worked, we probably would have offered $100-$120.

Remember, we have to store it 90 days at the very least, the cops can take it away at any time, and technology items only drop in price. Tablets and TVs are a particular problem in that way.

We have to make a profit or what is the point of opening the doors? And we have gotten burned from time to time too. So as I think I said before, the pawn shop is never the place to get the best deal, just the fastest deal.

[Undertoad]

One thing I don't enjoy is having a gun pointed at me.

Even if it's an antique, and the guy is looking to see if we buy them.

We don't, and please take it off the counter where I'm looking at an open barrel, a foot away from my abdomen.

[Undertoad]

The amount of shit we turn down at any price would amaze you, but you can't take everything or you would be inundated with crap in no time.

Today a gentleman walks in with a combination VHS-DVD player. It's 7 years old, which means we wouldn't take it. But also, he's broken off the door to the VHS part, which means it has no resale value AT ALL.

When we tell him we're not going to buy his broken piece of shit, he starts a retarded routine:

Dude: Just give me twenty dollars.

Sammy: No. We aren't going to make an offer.

Dude: Aw man, what about ten dollars.

Sammy: I told you, we're not interested, we're not going to buy it from you at any price.

Dude: Just five dollars! Help a brother out!

Sammy: We could go down to one dollar and it would still be no.

Dude: Four dollars. Why you gotta disrespect?

Sammy: What disrespect? It's not about respect, it's just that we can't buy stuff like this.

Dude: Aw man, two dollars. Just two dollars!

Sammy: No!

And the guy walks off all dejected. But is it over? No it's not. A half-hour later he walks back in with it.

Dude: What about we swap, I need the cables for a PS2.

Sammy: *sigh* We don't swap things and we don't sell PS2 stuff.

Dude: Aw, man!

[jimhelm]

why you holdin the brother down, whitey?

[Pete Zicato]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

One thing I don't enjoy is having a gun pointed at me.

"Don't point that thing at me, it might go off.

You might go off.

In fact, I wish you would."

-- Groucho Marx

[BigV]

UT, you describe a classic example of asymmetric information. You had information about the value of the item that the seller did not, and you used that information to your advantage. It is much less common for the buyer than the seller to have less information in most transactions like this. Imagine two private parties negotiating the sale of a used vehicle, the seller is likely to have far greater knowledge of the true quality of the car, its maintenance record, what's maintenance is imminent, etc. while the buyer is much more in the dark about the history of the vehicle.

Asymmetric information in exchanges like this can lead to unethical behavior and other problems. There are two classes of problems like this, problems that happen before the exchange like in your example; these are known as Adverse Selection problems. Problems that happen after an exchange are known as Moral Hazard problems, like a person who behaves recklessly after getting insurance. Presumably, they knew better about their behavior than the insurer, thus an asymmetric amount of information.

[Undertoad]

Precisely

And that is part of what makes it dramatic. On Saturday a young lady came in wanting to sell us her 42" Visio TV. I hooked it up to the cable and plugged it in. While I walked around to the other side, our cable comes winding back at me. Turns out the cable connector came off the TV.

Well this is tense, because now I can be accused of breaking it. Many ghetto people will grasp onto whatever they can to try to gain some advantage. Luckily Sammy went out and examined the part. He noticed that there was glue on the end of the part. Someone had broken it off and just glued the part back in place instead of actually repairing it.

The advantage of knowledge. Did she know it was broken and so wanted to off-load it to us? Because when we found the glue, the advantage flipped! Sammy asked her, pleasantly enough, whether she knew about this issue. She claimed that she'd bought the TV second-hand (Manufacture Date: Feb 2012) and was unaware of the problem.

...

To make the story more complicated, when the woman walked in with the TV, another customer tried to poach the deal, by being all interested, asking if she wanted to sell it to him, and kinda waiting to find out how our offer went down. This is something we don't allow, and we kicked the guy out. But on the way out, he told her that he'd be outside.

She left with her TV, cable connector in her pocket. We watched her leave from the video cameras we have trained on the street. We don't think she found the guy outside. Ghetto people, they don't have time to wait the 10 minutes for all this to go down. They got stuff to do on a Saturday.

[Undertoad]

And all that is one of the reasons pawn shop offers have to be low. Some things you can evaluate fairly 100% of the time, such as gold and diamonds. Electronics you can almost never evaluate fairly, because you can't test everything. Does the input switch on the remote work? We didn't check for that.

Frinstance, on laptops, people will sometimes set a password on the BIOS, which can't typically be fixed. This means we can't honestly sell it on eBay in any category but "For Parts or Not Working". So of course the return goes way lower, and we wind up burnt on a deal.

[Undertoad]

A good day for me is when someone buys an instrument and knows how to play it. A guy came in looking at basses. He asks to see one of them and kneels down and starts playing it, without an amp.

Well just the other day, I declared that we should take a little tiny amp and keep it under the counter for such times. When we have to evaluate a guitar or bass, or when someone wants to try something out, we have it all ready.

So I pull out this little amp, put it up on the counter, and hand him the instrument cable. The guy grins.

He finds a problem with the first bass he tries out. One of the pickups is bad. I agree with him. He selects another bass and starts playing Stanley Clarke's "School Days".

Sometimes, when a bass player comes in, I say hey I'm a bassist too, and then we have a moment. In this case, I didn't tell him. For some reason, I didn't tell him. But here he is, playing one of the great modern jazz bass pieces that fellow bassists all know... the first bass record I ever bought...

So I grin a huge big grin, and I say, "School Days".

And he grins a huge big grin, "You know that!!" and gives me the fist-bump.

When I get the fist-bump I know it is a good day.

He bought the bass, we gave him a huge discount, and everybody was happy. That is a good day at the shop.

[Undertoad]

One more post here to close out the day. One thing that is really kind of funny at the shop is how some people get upset over things that cost so little.

We make keys. Keys are $2. I gave that price to a woman the other day, and she gave me a "Oh HELL No" and walked away indignantly.

Today a guy asked for a money order for $1100. Because the maximum you can put on one money order is $500, these have to be broken up into three money orders, of $500, $500, and $100. Because there are three money orders instead of one, it's $3 extra for three money orders. And this guy today was just pissed off about that! Walks away with his $1100 in money orders, all fuming... that he had to pay two additional dollars for them!

[classicman]

Shoulda made them for $400 $400 & $300 lol

[Undertoad]

This week Alan is on vacation, so I'm not taking a day off, I'm working 6 days in a row. It's kinda rough.

There's an ebb and flow about the shop. For example, Mondays are always busy. Also, around the 1st of the month is always busy. People get their checks and want a lot of transactions. We do money orders, and right after the 1st of the month, people are all coming in for money orders to pay their bills.

But around about now is a cycle where desperate people show up. It's pretty depressing.

Now is when people bring us things that have no value. They bring us things that we just don't buy. Used heaters. Old cordless drills. Playstation 2s. Shitty phones. Old and shitty brand DVD players. Brands like Coby, Emerson. I say "Emerson pieces of shit."

But it is my job to not care, and turn them down. Nine out of ten offers today I merely had to turn down. I generally apologize for not being able to help them, and sometimes people say, no problem. But there is desperation in the air: and it's hard for a sensitive person to ignore.

Today the only music-related item that I dealt with was the sale of one pair of drum sticks. I told the gentleman to make beautiful music with them, and he said that he would.

[Undertoad]

Also, when it comes to trends...

Yesterday I wrote about the antique gun being pointed at me... today, within the space of an hour, two *replica* guns were offered. Nice antique pieces. Now I've gone 6 weeks doing pawnbrokering and within the space of two days, turned down 1 antique gun, 2 replica guns and a Japanese sword...

...is this something I should be concerned about?

[Undertoad]

Now let me say there are a few very SIMPLE things that I really enjoy!

- Making keys. Goddamn, I love making keys. You go away from the ghetto world for a moment, and use a loud machine to mill a replica key for somebody. The machine drowns out everything for a while. And everybody is happy when they get a new key. Sometimes I get to ask whether they want a gold or a silver key for the new one. It's such a tiny little thing, and yet so important. I take a weird pride in the keys that I make. $2 each.

- Running money orders. It's the simplest thing in the world! Enter password. Enter amount of money order. Press print. Wait for printout. Tear off money order. Separate store copy from customer copy. It's mindless, and yet I know that these folks are paying their bills and doing their business, and I'm a little cog in the machine.

- Tilling money. Now I must sound addled, but I totally enjoy the process of putting in bills and making change. As long as you have to do it 50 times a day, why not refine that skill? And so I've recently taken to pinching the bills in a certain way, where I can pinch out 3 or 4 bills or whatever number is needed.

[BigV]

pinching money from the till?

I'm sure you could word that better. Not funnier, but betterer maybe.