April 2015

Diary Of A PawnbrokerFeatures

It’s been a busy month. Lending has picked up again over the last few weeks and in particular the ‘Asset Lending’ where we typically lend £1000+ amounts on luxury watches and fine jewellery to help some of our affluent clients meet their cash flow needs. 

Among this month’s customers there was the lovely story of a mother and daughter who wanted to throw the best wedding ever for her only girl and needed a bit more than the father of the bride would budget for!

They borrowed £5000 against watches and fine jewellery and were really excited about the difference it was going to make to the day. One of my team has even been invited to the wedding!

 Another chap came rushing in because his bank account had been hacked into and the bank had frozen his account until they could sort out the problem. Left with no money, he needed £1000 to see him through the week. This time it was against a ‘Franck Muller’ diamond set watch valued at over £7000. He only needs the money for a week and will collect it back once his issue is sorted.

It’s nice to be able to help where it’s needed and it got me thinking about the ‘emergency loans’ of the old days.

Looking at the 1935 pledge book, it was very rare to see a loan over £10 in old money. That would be worth about £500 today and I suppose it’s because people didn’t own the same value of assets in those days. There were many loans against ‘pit pants and hosiery’ and gold was a rarity.

One customer this week was looking through the old pledge books and remembered her mum using a pawnbroker regularly to pledge her gold wedding ring. She would always get it back after a few weeks and it was a valuable service to her family then, as it still is today.

Not everybody wants their goods back though and with the gold price a little stronger of late, we have had a lot of customers selling their unwanted gold. It all makes sense as March and April are when personal debt typically hit their peak with the end of the tax year, credit card bills still looming from Christmas and the booking of summer holidays with deposits needing to be paid.

In fact recent research showed that 27% of the public would consider using a pawnbroker if they better understood how the process works.

It’s so simple really – Pawnbroking is a secured loan; you leave your item – a gold ring for example, with the pawnbroker for up to 7 months and can redeem it any day by paying back the loan and interest due at that point. A £100 loan will typically cost you £8.50 per month.

If you cannot repay the loan, the pawnbroker will sell your goods to repay the debt. If any extra profit is made it goes back to you, the original customer.

There really is nothing complicated about it and it only takes a few minutes, so pop along with your old ‘pit pants’ to Brown & Gold and see if we can help you. If you happen to have thrown yours away in the 1930’s the good news is that we also lend on smart phones, tablets and electrical items such as lap tops so you don’t even have to use your gold wedding ring any more either!

More stories to follow next month so call in and tell us your memories – it would be great to hear from you.

Chris Brown

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