As is evidenced by the big ratings numbers being generated by the History Channel program “Pawn Stars,” a growing number of Americans are fascinated with the process of buying and selling at pawn shops.
But while the show brings to light some of what goes on in the business, there’s a lot more to it than meets the TV screen.
For as long as he can remember, Houston resident Gary Parish frequented pawn shops to engage in the buying, selling and trading opportunities they offered.
A few years ago, his son Travis became a customer at a shop in Houston and shortly thereafter hooked on as an employee. When the owner decided to sell the business about a year later, Gary and Travis decided to buy it.
As Gary puts it, they got off to a bit of a rough start and had to learn as they went. But several on-the-job lessons and a few cosmetic makeovers later, the current version of Sharp Shooters Gun & Pawn was in place and the father-son partners had a shop they could call their own.
“I always bought, sold and traded everything I thought I could make money on,” Gary said. “But this was my first experience doing it as a business.”
The word pawn is derived from the Latin word “pignus,” meaning pledge. The items pawned to a broker are called pledges or pawns – or simply collateral. While retail sales is certainly one of the driving forces of pawn shops, it’s the loaning of cash on pawned items that makes them unique.
It’s an age-old concept: someone needs money, and they go to someone else to get it by either selling something or borrowing. Over the years, the culture of the pawn shop evolved in which the buying, selling and loaning all took place under the same roof.
People seeking money fast could go to a pawn shop and get it, as long as the business’ owner deemed that the item they brought in to sell or use as loan collateral was of sufficient value.
When an item is pawned for a loan, it may be purchased back within a contracted period of time for the amount of the loan plus an agreed upon amount of interest. No banker, no board, no credit bureau – just an agreement between business owner and customer.
“I’ve always thought of a pawn shop as a bank for people who can’t afford to have a bank,” Travis said. “You can’t take a gun to a bank and get $200.”
“One of the big things about a pawn shop is people can come in and get money in five minutes,” Gary said. “Whoever is behind the counter makes a decision instantaneously and someone either walks out with a product or money.”
The range of people who come through the door to take advantage of that fast cash is as varied as their reasons for needing money.
“Somebody might come in with a couple of guns and say ‘I have to go see my dad – this might be the last time I get to see him,'” Gary said. “They borrow money from us and hopefully they come back and pick up their product. That’s what we’re all about – folks picking up product.”
Some of the items most frequently pawned or sold include guns, guitars and gold. But the “3 Gs” are only the tip of the iceberg.
“We loan on anything of value,” Gary said, “and we buy all kinds of things we think will sell. There’s more diversity in a pawn shop then there is in most commercial stores. Even the big department stores don’t really have the kind of diversity a pawn shop has.”
“It’s pretty hard not to find something for everyone in here,” Travis said.
That diversity is affected by several factors, not the least of which is the personality of whoever is running a given store.
“Pawn shops are as different as their owners,” Gary said. “Corporations dictate how they are run, but here it’s at the discretion of the owner. If he likes guns more than he likes gold and jewelry, he’s going to have a lot more guns.”
“A pawn shop can be more of a loan business or a retail business, depending on how much you want to work it,” Travis said. “We really try to do both ends of it.”
Sharp Shooters, in fact, does about an equal amount of pawning and retailing. But people involved in either are required by Missouri law to provide picture identification, including current address.
“Very few things in a pawn shop are misappropriated,” Gary said. “I’m not going to say it doesn’t happen – because it does – but people know that if they do business here the local authorities have a line on them. Pawn shops are regulated hard by the state.”
“It’s real tight,” Travis said. “A couple of years ago they changed the regulations…especially with firearms.”
Since he started in the field a few years back, Travis has noticed an increase in the amount of selling being done by customers.
“It didn’t used to be half and half,” he said. “But since times are getting harder, people are seeing that they’re not going to be able to afford to come back and get their stuff and they might as well just sell it instead of pawning it.
“I’ve really seen that happening in the last 15 or 18 months.”
One of the things being sold more of late is gold.
“People have seen on TV how the price of gold is increasing,” Travis said. “It doesn’t take much gold to add up to a decent amount of money.”
“With prices going up, we’ve seen a big influx of gold,” Gary said. “Even good gold. But a lot of times it’s more valuable to a smelter; we can’t sell it if people can’t afford to buy it.”
When determining how much to lend on an item or how much to buy it for, a pawn shop worker’s go-to information source these days is the Internet. But having acquaintances with knowledge in a given field can come in handy, and consulting an “expert” is sometimes the best option.
“There’s stuff you can’t know about,” Gary said, “but you need to know somebody who does – somebody whose judgment you trust. But every good businessman knows his limitations and sometimes I just tell people ‘I don’t know – I’m not comfortable and I’m not interested.’
“I’m not saying their product is bad – if it’s in the right place it could be great. But if I have no knowledge of something, it’s not fair for me to make an offer or for them to accept an offer.”
Online reviews and posts values aren’t always a good way to gauge an item’s value; they can sometimes be misleading, especially if produced by someone with a negative agenda.
“We have to be careful, because the Internet will give you false witness sometimes,” Travis said. “You have to kind of judge on what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s a vast learning curve, but we can’t pause on any of it. If we can’t tell someone within five to 10 minutes what we’re willing to give for something, nine times out of 10 we can’t do anything for them.” Sometimes learning lessons about taking in items can be a bit on the costly side. The Parishes both recall a pocket watch that “wasn’t right” and went about 400 percent in the wrong direction.
“You have to pay for your education now and then,” Gary said. “You pay for it at the college level and you pay for it here.”
“But you know, you live and learn,” Travis said. “If that hadn’t happened, we might have had 10 of those in here that we had bought and didn’t realize weren’t right.”
While most of the items people bring in are of the standard variety, something unusual inevitably shows up now and then.
Included in Sharp Shooters’ current inventory is a pistol with the OH brand etched on it that was actually manufactured by Smith and Wesson in the early 1900s for use in the Spanish-American War, and a 1928 Illinois Watch Company wrist watch.
“They weren’t known for making wrist watches – just pocket watches,” Travis said.
As far dealing with real big-ticket items the way the Pawn Stars do, the Parishes figure that’s best left to them since it’s justifiable in their high-rent Vegas setting. The last thing an Ozarks pawn shop owner needs is high-priced items sitting around being glorified conversation pieces.
“The way we’ve always looked at it is if you can make a dollar and turn your inventory around, you’re better off than having those large items that are stagnant,” Travis said. “We sell a car or two now and then to help people out, but with the economy the way it is, 4-and-500 dollar items are high dollar stuff.”
Most of the people who come in to the store have either been in before or are referred by someone who has. Some regulars stop in several times a week, others a few times a month.
“We have a handful of good regulars we probably see on a weekly basis,” Travis said, “another 15 or 20 we see on a two-to-three week basis and hundreds of people we see once a month or once every couple of months.”
“It’s pretty rare that someone just pops in out of the blue,” Gary said. “But they do.”
Licking resident Tony Lyons drops in about every two weeks to check new gun inventory, talk about firearms and catch up on news and stories.
“I started coming here when they were still setting it up right after they bought it,” Lyons said. “They’re nice people and they have decent prices on their stuff. And if I need a little extra cash, I can bring something in and get it. I’ve pawned stuff, sold stuff and bought stuff here.”
Episodes of Pawn Stars document business at the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Rick Harrison runs the operation, with help from his father – simply referred to as The Old Man – and his son, Corey. Along with the three generations of Harrisons, the Gold & Silver staff includes Austin “Chumlee” Russell, whose nickname – given to him by grade school friends – comes from a character in the 1960s cartoon Tennessee Tuxedo, in which the penguin star had a walrus sidekick named Chumley.
Pawn Stars’ popularity stems not only from the staff members’ personalities, but the parade of unusual stuff people bring through the door to pawn or sell.
While Sharp Shooters customers may not be greeted by the likes of Chumlee or the Old Man, they will find a staff of similar size. Helping Gary and son are Ramon Clayton (who, like Travis, worked in the store for the previous owners and who Gary calls one of the store’s main go-to guys) and Gary’s brother Dale Parish (who came on a few months ago to fill a need for more floor coverage). On a daily basis, the group deals with a steady flow of customers at their Walnut Street location representing a true cross section of society.
“You’d be surprised by the people who come in to do business,” Travis said. “You see everyone from people I call higher-ups in the community all the way to the bottom. There are people who need 5-or-10 dollars to buy diapers for their child all the way to people who need 4-or-500 dollars to pay a bill until they get their tax refund back. We see it all.”
After having been a welder by trade for 30 years, Gary’s current venture is a departure from what he was used to for a long time. But his wife Susan believes he’s by no means out of place.
“He’s really in his element here,” she said. “Sometimes he says he wishes he hadn’t gotten into this, but that usually just means he’s having a bad day – and everyone has a bad day now and then.”
Everything sold at Sharp Shooters is guaranteed to work, and the store’s neat, organized look is the result of a conscious effort to avoid being lumped into a stereotype.
“We strive for that,” Travis said. “It’s not always easy because a lot of the stuff people bring in isn’t clean. But we get everything cleaned up and a lot of our regulars don’t call us a pawn shop – they just call us a store because they say we’re too clean to be a pawn shop.”
Gary said that now that the store’s period of growing pains has past, for the most part, future plans include expanding knowledge in the area that such a place exists. Travis said that the time for that is probably right.
“We jumped in with both feet at first and I think we went plumb over our heads before we got straightened out,” he said. “But it’s come a long way; we’ve expanded the inventory and changed things around to where we think we won’t have to any more.”