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Redeeming a pawn the hard way

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So last week, we noticed a story from Nampa, Idaho, about police catching a burglar cutting through the roof of a local pawn shop. Nothing that unusual.

But now we find that he was a carefully focused burglar.  According to Kotaku website, he just wanted his Xbox back. If he didn’t have the money to redeem it, he could always have extended the loan, which no doubt would have been cheaper than what he’s going to pay now.

Why he was armed with an AR-15 is yet unexplained.

 

Being ‘female friendly’

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We have been in pawn shops that do look kind of like a man cave, but we think this story in the Tampa Tribune overstates the novelty of Lauren Myhre’s “female friendly” She Money shop.

Most pawn shops, including our Maui pawn shop, have something like a 50-50 split of men and women customers, if not an absolute majority of women. After all, most pawn customers are working people, and women are in the work force in equal numbers with men.

Still, it couldn’t hurt to cater to half your audience, and Myhre has gone extra steps:

Like most any pawn shop, She Money takes gold, silver and diamond jewelry, but the store accepts high-end costume jewelry, too. Most women don’t have the tools and other items that are staples of the typical pawn shop, but Myhre saw the genuine value in other items they do possess.

“Women don’t always have jewelry to pawn or sell,” Myhre said. “I take a lot of crystal, such as Waterford or Tiffany crystal, as well as designer handbags and sunglasses, figurines, hand-carved wooden pieces, art, sterling silver, pieces of fine furniture, high-end lamps, musical instruments and even high-end cars.”

 

At Kamaaina Loan, we take most of those things, too, without specially considering ourselves “female friendly.”  Cars are an exception as Hawaii law restricts that, but our retail store has sun glasses, art, designer handbags. Not many lamps, perhaps.

A lot of what any pawn shop accepts as collateral (or will purchase) is unisex. Game systems are an obvious example. We probably get as many Xboxes and Playstations from women as from men, and, in fact, a lot from moms accompanied by their children.

 

Want to visit ‘Pawn Stars’?

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Get in line. This tip from Examiner.com says 4,000 people a day go through the famous Gold and Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas.

Pro: It’s free.

Con: There is usually a line.

Helpful hint: There’s a 24-hour drive-through window.

Seth Gold on pawnbroking and teevee

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Hard Core Pawn’s Seth Gold gave an interview to the National Pawnbrokers Association in which he talks about how he was headed for a career in medicine, in part because he had picked up the negative attitudes toward pawnbroking that were — and still are — so common, even growing up in a pawnbroking family.

But he got — sidetracked hardly seems the right word — back on the family track and ended up in the family business anyway.

Seth Gold at work

Seth Gold at work

He praises the effect of the show on himself and on the pawn  business in general:

Another source of pride for me that stems from our roles as pawnbroking personalities is that visiting a pawn store is now cool. There are so many negative stereotypes surrounding the industry that have been dispelled thanks to reality shows such as ours. When people see our store on television every week, they are not only entertained, but also become open and aware to situations where they themselves might choose to visit their local pawn store.

Hard Core Pawn is an unreal reality show in one sense, at least. The Golds are well-known in the pawn business, and are really sweethearts. All that drama on the screen; that’s Hollywood.

(We are Kamaaina Loan are aware our local readers may not be familiar with Hard Core Pawn, unless they get it via satellite or internet, as Oceanic doesn’t favor it. But the show has the Golds arguing amongst themselves all the time. That’s scripted for them. In real life they get along.)

More teevee pawn

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Why not us?

As you may know, Kamaaina Loan shot some trial scenes for a pawn shop reality show. You may even have helped us by bringing in your strange items. While not entirely dead, that one hasn’t been picked up by a producer yet.

Yet another pawn reality show debuted over the holidays, called Game of Pawns, shot in Branson, Missouri.

What caught our attention was not the new wrinkle — it’s a combination of a pawn reality show and a game show —  but its location in a tourist mecca.

With the notable exception of Hard Core Pawn set in Detroit, it seems most of the leading pawn reality shows are in tourist towns — Las Vegas, Beverly Hills, now Branson. What more touristy place to have another than Maui?

We’re ready for our screen test, Mr. DeMille.

On the other hand, according to this other story about the big dog among pawn shows, Pawn Stars, being a pawn star brings with it its own problems:

“Their life has completely changed because of this show,” Mason said. “They used to be just guys working in a pawn shop – now they’re celebrities.”

Now, when they’re taping the show, they have restrictions on who can come in, because they’d never be able to get anything done otherwise. But the extras you see in the background are picked out of the actual crowd.

So if you go, you could be in the background on the show, but they’ll make you sign a waiver and instruct you not to walk around staring into the camera.

 

What was he thinking?

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From Albuquerque, a short piece about how pawn brokers and police interact to catch bad guys.

There’s something new here. We have often cautioned that pawn shops are bad places to sell stolen goods, since we take your name, address, phone number, driver’s license and thumb print; plus each transaction is videotaped.

To heck with Sherlock Holmes examining footprints in the snow.

But, in Albuquerque, there was one thief who pressed his luck even further. If you watch the report, it says  a regular customer at University Pawn snatched a tray of chains and ran out. Then went to a different pawn shop to sell them.

What was he thinking?

The KOAT report mentions a pawn shop network that tracks thefts in Albuquerque and also gives the example of a woman whose ring was stolen who emailed pictures to every pawn shop, resulting in a recovery.

First, you have to have a picture available to email. Second, on Maui, you can use mystolengoods.com, Kamaaina Loan’s exclusive website where crime victims can post information about their losses. That simultaneously alerts both our pawnbrokers and the Maui police, and provides descriptions.

The irony here is that we make it as easy as possible to alert us, and we (helped along by state reporting laws) make it as hard as possible for thieves to fence at pawn shops in general and our Maui pawn shop in particular. Well, that makes it less likely, on the whole, that a recovery will be made through our shop.

 

 

 

Class acts

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A repeated theme here at Kamaaina Loan blog has been the turnaround in the attitude toward pawn shops in the press, probably due to reality teevee more than anything else.

Over the weekend, a kind of milestone in this process occurred when the New York Times published an admiring piece about pawn shops for rich East Siders, based on a 250-year0-old English pawn shop’s first branch in Manhattan. Not only that, although the story was in the “Wealth Matters” section, far inside the bulky newsprint version of the Sunday Times, for a brief time today, the story was on the front page of the Times’ internet edition, until it was pushed off by fresh Chris Christie scandals.

Their fancy East Side store

Their fancy East Side store

Now, as a pawn shop, we are happy to have the Times look upon pawn shops as public-spirited businesses, or at least as public-spirited as the big banks the paper writes about all the time. But we do have a couple of comments.

First, the Times is about a year late on this story. Reports about pawning by the rich have been common fare on such sites as CNN for a long time now. Second, the Times may have been late, but its reporting (by Paul Sullivan) was superior:

The high-end portion of the industry is betting that with comparatively lower pawn rates and an ability to fulfill even large loan requests in a day or two, it will be able to build its business on happy repeat customers. Paul Aitken, founder and chief executive of Borro, said he attributed repeat business to the human desire to spend today without thinking about tomorrow.

“Entrepreneurial people like to do things on the spur of the moment, and they’re probably not the best planners,” he said. “When they have money in their pocket, they like to buy luxury goods. When they don’t, they like to use those goods to get money for their next venture.”

And that is how he ends up taking a Mercedes McLaren in as collateral for a loan.

That’s an aspect — we are not necessarilu endorsing it — we haven’t seen in numerous other stories about high-end pawn.

Third, high-end pawn is not, as Sullivan’s story implies, something that arose when banks tightened credit following the Panic of 2008. It’s been part of the business all along. It has probably extended its catchment area since 2008.

Our Wailuku pawn shop. We have a fish.

Our Wailuku pawn shop. We have a fish.

Fourth, while our pawn shop at 96 N. Market St. is not as flossy as Suttons & Robertsons Upper East Side shop, our Private Viewing Room is just as swank as S&R’s, what with its Chinese antiques and paneling. And — something S&R does not seem to have — its private entrance, for those rich borrowers who don’t want the neighbors to know they are pawning the McLaren. (Actually, in Hawaii law pawn shops cannot make loans on McLarens, but you get the concept.)

private

Fifth, the bottom line is, as always with pawn loans, would you rather be turned down by a banker or accepted by a pawn broker. Because pawn brokers lend on collateral, and the extra scrutiny that has scared bankers into holding onto their money means nothing to us. Gold is gold, a diamond is a diamond, a Rolex is a Rolex, whether the stock market is booming or crashing.

A ‘blue feather’ day

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At our Maui pawn shop a “blue feather day” is one when someone says, “Gee, it’s been ages since anybody brought in a nice 2-carat diamond,” and the door opens and in walks a nice 2-carat diamond.

alice

Or, as pawnbroker Stefen explains her blue feather day Thursday:

“I was working in 50 N.Market Street [where we sell golf clubs] on the new inventory system. While putting the new price tags on the golf clubs, I remarked to my co-worker Bob how nice a certain vintage set of clubs were. Bob then said that the clubs should go on eBay because it was gonna take a special person to buy those clubs because of their age.

“I noticed how nice the wood clubs were and said that they were the type of clubs Alice Cooper would appreciate since he’s bought vintage clubs from us before. Bob agreed and said that he thought Alice would like them as well, or maybe some kind of sporting club that could put them on display. After that, I went about finishing tagging the rest of the golf clubs and left to go do more work in another room.

“Not an hour later did Bob call me in the room I was working to tell me that Alice Cooper had just come in and bought those Vintage Clubs! I said ‘No way,’ but Bob told me that he had told Alice Cooper about the conversation we had just had about him and the clubs and Alice said, ‘They’re mine now.’ Both of us couldn’t believe that Alice Cooper had just come in and bought those clubs within an hour of us saying he should have them. What a coincidence huh?”

Big Rich picks up the story. “Alice Cooper visits the store from time to time, and he has bought things, not only clubs, before; but he doesn’t come in every week or every month.”

The clubs, a set of three woods in beautiful condition, had been around for a while (nobody remembers exactly how long) and had just been put out on retail display. “It’s like those clubs were calling, ‘Alice, Alice Cooper. Come by Kamaaina Loan, come by Kamaaina Loan.’ “

Rich adds, “You better believe we gave him a great price.”

Alice, of course, is a huge golf fan and even titled his autobiography, “Alice Cooper, Golf Monster.”

The police can’t do that

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From here on Maui, we have been watching with concern  a move by the Honolulu police to force Oahu pawnbrokers to use international software company proprietary software to report pawn loans and purchases of secondhand goods. Kamaaina Loan is not opposed to electronic reporting of pawn transactions; we have done it to Maui police for years and, in fact, were the first pawn shop anywhere to do it.

But the off-the-shelf software can be used abusively, and this story from the Dallas Morning News confirms our fears — pawn reporting software is being used to profile citizens and harass them. It is more than a little startling that the Dallas police cooperated with the reporter, since their behavior is clearly unconstitutional, but they not only admit it, they celebrate their misbehavior:

Every two weeks, Franklin circulates a list of his top 10 “pawnees” to other areas of the department. Tarves ranked No. 3 in May for selling and pawning dozens of items in two weeks, including jewelry, gold, computers, vacuum cleaners, sports memorabilia and watches.

“We’re not picking on pawnees, not picking on pawnshops — just looking at things that look suspicious,” Franklin said.

People usually make the watch list if they have had prior run-ins with the law along with suspicious activity. Several sales of the same type of item — such as selling multiple TVs — also raise red flags.

Note that not only do the Dallas police not have probable cause to suspect these “top 10” customers of a specific crime, the police do not even have evidence that a crime has been committed.

While the story says that the police use the software to try to match records of stolen items with records of pawn transactions — something legal and even smart policing — it makes clear that they are also using the software to generate freeform — and evidence-free — hit lists:

Not many people on pawnee lists obtained by The Dallas Morning News had been arrested on property crime charges, including Tarves. He has been convicted of theft by check and has two check forgery charges pending.

Franklin said the charges can be difficult to prove because even if the goods were stolen, authorities would have to prove that the seller was the one who originally stole them.

But police have the person on their radar and might connect them to other crimes. Franklin said he gets positive feedback within the department.

Get that? “even if the goods were stolen”

The software — there are two main competitors in this area — can be used in even more abusive ways. Although the story does not indicate that Dallas police have done so, police can equip squad cars with interactive computers that track persons they “think” are suspicious and alert cops on patrol when they enter a pawn shop.

Think about that. And let’s take it out of the realm of pawn shops. Suppose police think you are a shoplifter, based on nothing more than that some computer program profiled you for “shoplifter-like” behavior;  and then, every time you walk into Macy’s, the local patrol car comes by to follow you.

You’d be outraged, we think, and rightfully so.

 

 

A few words about protecting artwork

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Via Pawn Times, a link to a page of advice from Beverly Hills Pawn (where the movie stars go, so they say) about how to protect your artwork, particularly prints, lithographs and photographs.

Take good care of her

Take good care of her

Our Maui pawn shop also takes artwork in on pawn, and like Beverly Hills Pawn, we store it in climate-c0ntrolled spaces. The post has some cautions about storing your stuff at home, and that goes double for Maui, where humidity and mold are worse problems than in Southern California.

The post does not say it, but protecting art is cheap (how much can a Mylar sleeve cost?) while having a conservator restore it is expensive.