Pawn 101: Domestic science in the pawnshop

Pawnbroking, by definition, involves used stuff, which means dealing with wear and tear and dirt. We clean jewelry and steam diamonds, for example.

Here’s a simple way to deal with dents in your sterling silver hollowware (or gold hollowware, in the rare event you have any of that):

Recently we bought a Tiffany sterling water pitcher with a thumb-size dent in the body, probably from dropping on the floor. Pushing the dent out was easy — just roll a hard sphere back and forth from the inside.

We used a billiard ball.