But not from us. We hate fakes. No, it’s Jack Ma, head of notorious fraud site Alibaba (the Amazon of China, some call it, which seems unfair to Amazon). In a story reported at CNN Moneym, Ma said “The problem is that the fake products today — they make better quality, better prices than the […]
Heck, no, we don’t mean the US political campaign is beginning to be full of truth and good nature. But after a long dry spell, Kamaaina Loan blog can again report on pawn-based reality teevee programming. The reality pawn audience seemed to have peaked and then Chumlee of “Pawn Stars” got himself arrested on drug […]
For such a simple idea that people have been using for thousands of years, pawning seems baffling to many people. Just the other day here at Kamaaina Loan, we were discussing possible regulatory changes — perhaps coming from the national government — that would affect us, so we pulled down “Black’s Law Dictionary” to refresh […]
OK, we get it. Pawnshops are not among the best-loved of businesses — except by our customers, who value us. But just because you disapprove of or dislike somebody’s business, that doesn’t mean you can use local government to make ridiculous impositions. This news has not penetrated to some of the more backward parts of […]
Pawnbrokers are sometimes called “fringe bankers.” Well, we are called worse things. The people who call us “fringe” bankers are generally more or less sympathetic to what pawnbrokers do, in at least one of our many roles, which is to provide credit to people who are ineligible or unwilling to participate in “mainstream” banking. At […]
Two women came into a Jacksonville, Florida, pawn shop. One was well-endowed when she came in, but she was even better endowed when she left, because — as surveillance tape shows — while her friend was keeping the salesman occupied, she slipped 5 gold chains and gold pendant into her brassiere. The shop owner described […]
From Florida comes a report of another way for pawnbrokers to lose money. In this case, $30,000 to a crooked employee who forged pawn tickets, put his own thumbprint on them, then pocketed the amount supposedly given to the customer. This shop was using paper forms, so it might have been harder to carry it […]
From Russia Today, a somewhat hard to follow but very detailed look back a hundred years to the days when you could pawn your way into an earth-changing revolution. The occasion is the hundredth anniversary of the failed Irish rebellion against England. Russian revolutionaries at the time regretted that the Irish were “premature” but also […]
Besides the tools, surfboards, guitars and fishing poles that we usually comment on, Kamaaina Loan is — quietly — the biggest dealer in fine art in Wailuku. Just because we don’t have “gallery” in our name doesn’t mean we are not a gallery. Over the years, we have handled original Rembrandt etchings, Salvador Dali etc. […]
We say that all the time, and we mean it. For example, news reports say that a San Francisco pawn shop, A to Z, is selling (on eBay) what appears to be an unreleased — even unannounced — new version of the latest Google Glass gadget. No, sorry to say, Kamaaina Loan doesn’t have […]
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