Don’t ever buy for the listed price unless it just came out of pawn and you absolutely HAVE to have it. First question is: “How long has this been out of pawn?” If it’s been more than a week, you can really start to haggle on it. They rely on the turnover of items in the shop and if something is there for a while, they will be more likely to work with you on price.
Best thing is finding an obscure or specialized item and innocuously asking questions about it. I once saw a special format handheld two-way radio I knew was selling for $895 new, in a pawn shop for $50. I asked to see it, turned it on, confirmed it worked, and asked the guy behind the counter what it was (knowing darn good and well what it was). He said, “Ah, it’s some sort of weird CB or something.”
I offered him $20, he countered with $30 and we settled for $25. I bought a charging unit for $75 and sold that radio to someone who could use it for $500. Best profit margin I’d ever made.
The handful of times I have tried to haggle on ridiculously overpriced items in a pawn shop I was just treated like I was trying to rip them off and told that was the price. I have gotten the same thing from used car dealers
I agree, pawn shops can be excellent places to get great deals on DVDs. At my local pawnbroker, all DVDs (including blu-rays) are $2. They have hundreds of titles and new, unused movies. You can’t beat that deal.
When I got word that I’d been hired by a school in Korea and had to put everything I owned into two suitcases and a carry-on bag, flight in 48 hours, the local pawn shop was an ideal place to unload my rather large and eclectic collection of CDs and DVDs. It was them or the garbage man.
Later, when I was in Guam for a visa run and unexpectedly found myself in town for an extra night and broke, I sold my iPod for cab fare and a hotel for a night. Pawn shops are a godsend sometimes.
The problem with the pawn shops that I have been in is that the list price is so ridiculous that 50% off of that would be a good starting point for negotiation. You are basically haggling against yourself unless you open with a 75% discount off of the list price.
But unless you needed the money Right Now, as others have said, you would have gotten a better price had you sold it elsewhere. Most states allow private transfers of handguns and an ad in the local bulletin board would have taken more time, but fetched you more cash.
Supposition is fine but there’s no guarantees in what you say could have happened. I made more than I paid by nearly $200 and I was very satisfied at having gone through professional channels which assured me proper gun ownership protocols were likely to be followed.
My roommate and I used to sell things at pawn shops all the damn time. We probably wouldn’t have done it so much except we were dope fiends and didn’t have the internet. We also got comparable prices to what we would have gotten selling things on Craigslist, without dealing with random strangers coming to the house. I used to get DVDs out of eviction piles for free, or from garage sales for a quarter, and sell em at pawn shops for a dollar each. A few places stopped buying DVDs because they have so damn many.
Hardcore Pawn customers appear to be mainly people on the margins. As WhyNot indicated there is a big laundry list of things re bank accounts, credit cards etc. you have to have solidly in place to sell stuff on eBay and eBay will charge your ass hard.
If you are selling jewelry or similar on ebay and do not have a solid and extensive feedback rating your offers are likely to be pretty slim as people will be cautious of you.
I watched a few episodes of Pawn Stars years ago but thought it wasn’t very good, but I’ve recently started watching Hardcore Pawn anytime I catch it (it seems like they show it once a week or so in a block of like four episodes.)
In the first episode of the series, the owner sort of explains explicitly why people come into pawn shops. He says a lot of his customers don’t have bank accounts, and they need to pay the rent tonight. I think that’s pretty much it, these are poor people who probably don’t do too well in planning ahead. They know they need to make a rent payment for a month, but for various reasons put off on dealing with it until the last day.
They pawn their TV to pay the rent, and then come back to get their TV when they get their paycheck or government check. If you ever notice in some of their dialogues with customers, they’ll ask “have you pawned this item here before?” (I think because if so, they typically just look you up and give you the same amount each time) They’re asking that because I bet a lot of their customers have pawned the same TV or wedding ring many, many times at their store.
I read an interview with the owner’s son (who interestingly is a University of Michigan graduate who was accepted into and started medical school when he dropped out because he realized he didn’t want to be a doctor), and he had some interesting stuff to say. For one, he mentions that in his mind Pawn Stars isn’t really a good example of the pawn business, they’re more of a specialty business that specializes in buying rare items and selling them. Or at least that is what the show is about, I believe Pawn Stars actually operates a more normal pawn shop that just isn’t shown as much on the show. According to Seth, the real pawn business is primarily the loan business, and they always prefer to give you a loan versus buying your product. Once they’ve given you a loan, they prefer you pay your loan versus defaulting, because there is no real guarantee they make anything off your item. The loan is guaranteed profit if you pay it off.
They also note that the majority of people do pay off their loan, something like 80%-90% is apparently the average portion of people at American Jewelry & Loan who pay off their loan. I found that interesting, because I had always assumed most stuff that was pawned people never paid for it and just took the money.
Also, it should be no surprise you won’t get anywhere close to eBay price at a pawn shop. Pawnbrokers these days often sell their merchandise on eBay, so they aren’t going to be able to stay in business if they’re buying from people at that price.
No, they are not unless it’s a very recently openned shop operated by people completely unaware of how the the pawn business works. Pawn brokers, at least in the United States, who have been in business ususally have a good working relationship with the police that includes turning over a nice detailed lists of merchandise that’s been pawned (that’s why they’ll ask for your I.D. when you pawn something). Those lists are always checked against recent robberies and muggings.
The whole idea behind pawning something is that whatever you pawn is temporary collateral for a short term loan. You are supposed to come back and repay the loan and get your valuable back.
Once the 90 day, or whatever, terms of the loan expire without repayment, then the pawned item belongs to the shop and can be sold, until then it is still yours and being kept to secure the short term loan.
Pawn shops will also buy items out-right, but that is different from pawning an item. You will be much better off selling the item to anyone else but a pawn shop because they are not going to offer you the full value, it is a business after all and they need to resell the item at a profit.
But it is fast money if you cannot wait for the item to sell. So you get screwed by selling your item below value but you get the money fast.
It’s a good point about not expecting market value by selling to a pawnbroker. If you sell something to a pawnbroker you should expect to pay what amounts to a fee for the pawnbroker selling it for you. You’re basically saying you don’t want to go through the trouble of finding a buyer for your product so you’re going to sell it to a guy who is willing to keep the product for months or maybe longer until he can find a buyer. He’d be dumb to pay you the price you could have gotten from Craigslist if you found your own buyer, because he’d basically be valuing his stocking the item and trying to sell the item at $0, and that’s a good way to run yourself out of business.
It’s sort of like selling gold. Yeah, it might be $1680/oz spot price, but if you’re selling it to a local gold buyer he’s not going to give you spot price. Spot price is what he might be able to get, so he needs to give you something less than that or he is actually not valuing his services at all, the whole reason you go to a gold buyer is because they are more easily able to get gold out into the real commodities market and sell it, something you are not able to do.
Always haggle on used merchandise. On new stuff, there isn’t enough margin for it.
Most pawnshops are neither “Pawn Stars” nor “Hardcore Pawn” but are probably closer to “Hardcore Pawn”.
Pawnshops do take a fair amount of stolen merchandise. This is a good thing. If we take the TV that was stolen from you, you have a much better chance of getting it back than if the thief sells it on the street. As noted above, we had to tell the police about everything we took in. If you see something of yours in a pawnshop, call the police. If you had filed a police report, they’ll come confiscate it and the pawnshop will take the loss. At least, that’s how it worked with us.
Generally speaking, selling or pawning gets the same price. The pawnbroker doesn’t mind if he has to wait 2 months to put your stuff on sale. In the meantime, if you do come back, he wants to charge as much interest as he can. So he’ll usually loan the same as his purchase offer.
Pawnshops aren’t for everyone or everything. If you like them, great. If you don’t, that’s ok too. If the pawnbroker seems offended at your offer, that’s his problem. Don’t take it personally. It’s a VERY tough job. You see the seediest side of society when they’re at their worst. It takes its toll on you.
You can find good deals almost every day-----not absolute steals but good deals. You can also (regularly) find bad deals.
Last week I had an HVAC vacuum pump go out 1 mile away from a reputable pawn shop where I am known and can haggle over every price. The best he would do was $60 lower than a brand new pump. So…$240 for a used pump of unknown pedigree, or $300 for a new pump. (from a HVAC supply house)
I bought the new pump.
But these guys aren’t stupid. They research ebay to find the market value before they buy, and before they price it and put it out on the floor.
Still…they aren’t experts on everything-in-the-world and will occasionally mis-price something and leave a lot of money on the table.
If you think the pawn shop is a source of unbelievable steals from guys who are ignorantly selling original copies of the Declaration of Independence for pennies you don’t understand pawn shops.
They’re astute buyers, and astute sellers. But they’re not infallible. Know your product. Know what they go for on ebay etc. An ignorant buyer can get a bad deal.
I’ve seen plenty of bad deals. But I’ve seen tons of GREAT deals.
Um, yeah right. Police don’t have the time or resources to database pawn lists. Big departments like LAPD don’t have time or resources to database rape kits or fingerprints from major crimes. You think some slacker in the pawn unit is going to be gung ho and take his paper submissions from the 50 pawn shops in his district and cross reference them against the 200 burglary reports they take each day? Get real. Property crimes are at the bottom of the list when it comes to diversion of resources. That’s why insurance companies exist.
