Okokok.. Easy now.

...

Trying to Get This Out Of My Head
 

Down at the pawn shop
Down at the pawn shop
It's the kinda shop where you can sell a jawn there
They hate you, you hate thieves
This is part of society
FSM have mercy on a guy that's
Down at the pawn shop

"Is it real?" "Yeah... real fake."


People come in with all kinds of gold. Most of the time there's a small mark on it somewhere that says what amount of gold is in the item. 10K is 40% gold, 14K is 60% gold, 18K is 80% and 24K is 100%.

I have yet to see anything 24K. Most simple jewelry is 10K and if there is a real stone or an item of real importance, it will be 14K.

If it's sterling silver, it will usually be marked 950.

Lady comes in with a chain, saying "It's real! Oh it's real!"

"I believe you ma'am, but I have to examine every item."

Look at it through the loupe, and sure enough: "14KGP" which means it's Gold Plated. Not solid gold.

"No ma'am, this is gold plated, we can't do a loan on it."

She takes it back in silence and leaves the shop with her man. And once the shop door closes, we hear a shit ton of screaming and yelling.

The poor old man probably never told her. Oh well.



"Is it real?" "Well, it has mass, that's a good sign."

This guy came back, and told me that his antique gun sold to a collectables shop for $2000.

What was his purpose in coming back? Letting you know you guys "missed out" somehow?

I bet they probably bought his 40 Watt Phased Plasma Rifle too.

Banner day today. BANNER day. She came back in just now and apologized. She said she was totally drunk.

No he had a few more items to offer, and only brought that up after everything else was done, so it was just conversation.

I would love to deal in antique items, which we don't do, and coins, which we don't do. But there has to be a limit.

I can **promise** you limey that I will never cross swords with jim, not even if he brings both swords.

A crazy woman comes in and sells us her computer. In the middle of the transaction her man ? comes in and tells her to pay the taxi driver.

Out of nowhere she goes apeshit on him. He's trying to get her to pay. She's yelling at him that he should pay out of the money that he owes her.

She's at about an 8 out of 10 and at one point she pretends to go to hit him. The guy doesn't flinch, he just looks over at us and says "Guys, I box for a hobby." And it's clear he sees her as no present danger, and isn't going to do anything, but she goes on screaming, even saying "call the cops on me if you want!" She's cussing all over the place, "Mother fucker, I ain't payin', you pay, you mother fucker!"

The battle goes out and back into the shop. At one point the taxi driver makes an appearance. He's an old guy. It sounds like she took the taxi to the store to get her computer here, then asked her man ? to come retrieve her.

Why she doesn't want to pay is unclear. She's now been given $65 in cash for her computer, so she does have money; and we are speeding to try to get all of her transaction done.

In the end, we think she just wanted to not pay the taxi ever, and developed this scheme to not pay: call her man ? , make a big fuss, get rid of the heavy computer and then just walk.

Because this fracas does not involve us, we think it is just funny, and behind the plexiglass we are laughing and our other customers are laughing too. Crazy woman, if she is not attacking your ass, is just entertaining.

One time a doc was examining a prospective employee and I was there in the room with them. Doc sees a scar, says, "What's this?"

Dude says, "Wife stabbed me,"

without missing a beat the doc said, "They do that sometimes,"

It happens. Crazy happens- a lot of crazy happens. It CAN be rather entertaining if you aren;t involved.

UT I saw you post that people can only pawn 950 silver? I was looking at the silver I have because I was sure 925 was the definition of sterling and that seems to be the case except some of my silver is Mexican silver which is supposed to be 950 but its stamped 925. I am metally confused..

UT simply misspoke: sterling is .925. Mexican silver in jewelry ranges from .925 (typically) to .999 and is stamped accordingly. Pawn shops and other bullion value [BV] metal buyers usually deal in coin silver [.900] or better fineness. US buyers often accept Canadian silver coins [.800] and US transition coinage [.400]. Anything else less than .800 usually isn't worthwhile (considering smelting costs); unless, there's considerable volume.

this is true.

It sounds like you need a taser. If you lit a few folks up, I bet they wouldn't be as rowdy in the shop. Or, I do have a double barrel 12 ga with rubber buckshot

I watched Loopers last night and the guys were being paid in silver ingots, would you guys re-smelt that sort of thing or are there restrictions?

On one of those shows where people buy the contents of unpaid storage "rooms", the buyer melted down all the silver and gold to resell it.

We would happily buy it in and melt it. I've made loans on them before. How big were the ingots?

But we don't have to actually melt anything personally. That would be a pain in the ass. We just sell it to the smelters.

Maybe 2 1/2 x 5 x 3/4?

How much value was that supposed to represent?

One life. It appears to be a literary reference to Judas' thirty pieces of silver. The Loopers live a very fashionable existence in a fallen society. The Loopers execute folks from the future who get in trouble with the mob and are sent back in time for disposal. Those targeted for execution are bound and packaged with an unspecified number of bars (maybe thirty) and sent to a specified time/place for execution. Very interesting movie with (as always) some logical holes created by the timeline alterations. Spoiler: The real fun starts when the Looper pulls gold off the body rather than silver. That means he has just executed himself.

Sounds like the IT I work in - and there I was, thinking insurance companies had quality, well organized IT :yelsick:

~ Some (about half) of the stuff we turned down today ~

Ladies watch, possibly antique, but nothing to us
DVD player, not a brand we deal in
Gold, but you don't have your ID, we need proper state ID
Tool kit w/cordless drill, cheap ass kit of no-name brand, too shitty for us even if it's new
HP Deskjet 1000 new in box, too low-end of a printer for us
Bracelet, alleged silver, but not stamped
DVD player, another brand we don't deal in
Blackberry phone, too old, we only buy iPhones and the newest of other brands
Playstation 2 games, too old, we only buy PS3
Ring, fake, stamped 14K but not actually gold
DVDs, we have stopped buying them because we have too many
White XBox 360 - we don't take the white ones, they are too old and tend to die
Gold-plated silver rings - not enough weight in silver for a pawn
Xbox 360 games - too scratched

I know the Salvation Army store in Old Greenwich, CT are a great place to pick up extremely valuable antiques for a song, I wonder if there are pawn shops that cater to a better class of pawners?

My theory currently is, if the people of the neighborhood can eBay, it will not support a pawn shop.

C'mon UT, how can you deprive these poor people their anti-freeze in this weather. :lol2:

How did you know the ring wasn't gold?

The sellers finger had a green stripe around it.

Pete, google acid test gold

I hope to take pictures of the test to show you guize.

Huh. Interesting.

Poor Richard.

He fell in love with a Yamaha digital piano in the shop. (I did too. It's such a beautiful thing. I hope to have one some day.)

It's $299. He came in two months ago and put $100 down in a layaway on it.

But hard times have fallen on Richard, and he's getting evicted. He has a temporary job and is going for a better permanent job. But now he's just hoping he can stay with a friend for a while until he gets back on his feet.

He came in yesterday with $13 to his name and put $10 down on the keyboard to keep hold of it. He needs it; it's as important to him as life. I know this; I helped him set it up when he tried it. I saw how he felt about it when he heard it.

The problem is that he told all of his story to Alan, the shop manager who has been there for 22 years. Alan has no sympathy; he's remarkably unmoved by any story at all.

Alan is not a sociopath, although his upbringing made him turn inwards, like an only child might do. But when Richard started buttering him up, saying "You've been as good to me as anyone in my life except my sister," this only made Alan freeze up a little. Made him uncomfortable.

Alan figures that Richard is putting it on thick because he is desperate to keep that keyboard. Alan has heard every story, and he is numb to it. He has to be, in order to do his job.

Right now there are thousands of dollars held up in layaways, and everybody who has one wants special treatment. At some point, if Richard doesn't come through, his layaway is going to become unprofitable for the shop, and the piano is going to go up for sale. And someone is going to buy it, because everyone wants that piano.

We don't like white people at the shop. It's one thing we all agree on.

95% of the customers are black. When white people come in...

A third are coming in via the methadone clinic down the block. These are troubled people, and may shake or be unable to speak correctly.

A third are ghetto people. White people who have somehow wound up living in the ghetto. These are troubled people, and may shake or be unable to speak correctly.

A third are suburban people who have Googled us to find a pawn shop, and want to sell us their expensive items because they like the idea of a pawn shop.

Last week a trio of serious white professionals, jackets and ties, came to the store with a bag of Taylor-Made golf clubs. An excellent brand. They wanted $1500. We offered $300. They left annoyed.

Now, I report to you this cultural phenomenon. At the pawn shop, you can get fifty cents on the dollar for many gift cards. White suburban young people have figured this out, and they come to the shop with their Home Depot cards that they got for Christmas. So gramma, understand that if you are giving junior $100 in Home Depot to outfit his apartment, he is just selling it at the pawn shop for $50 for weed or whatever.

Yesterday a guy comes in with his $100 Home Depot card and knows it's $50 at the pawn shop. But before he closes the deal, he says haltingly, "I know this is weird but can I get 50 dollars and 50 cents for it?"

Unpredictable last-minute dickering of the lowest quality. He is denied.

fifty cents denied?

that is one tough pawn shop my brother. Or should I say 'my jawn'.

It's not about the fittycents. It's about the bullshit pushing of the rules. Next time he'll push for $50.75, or $51.00... the thing people forget about negotiating is that you're not facing a computer. You're facing a real person who has the ability to be pissed off. This is the type of guy who tries to talk his way out of shit with the police, and eventually gets tasered because he just kept wanting to "explain."

If this is a regular customer, I would have refused to buy the giftcard at all. Tell him to come back next week and try not acting like a dick next time. (Well, I wouldn't have done it myself, because I'm terrified of in-person confrontation and could never work in a place where negotiations of any kind were a standard part of business. But I would have supported a business policy as such.)

I see.

Sounds like someone's got an early case of the Mondays...

Next time you might say "Only if you'll take the entire amount of $50.50 in pennies." I'd give him the 4 bits out of my own pocket just to see the look on his face.

Aww, C'mon, bro, like, it's not the money, it's the feeling of having WON against the system.

You could have said, yes, provided you take it as a money order. Then charge him a buck for the MO.

Could he have needed change for a parking meter/vending machine?

If he actually wants to negotiate, he should go to some round number like 55 or 60. A lot of people figure they have to negotiate, although our number is almost always final.

So he probably did have some special reason he wanted 50.50, but just acting all weird and asking for it awkwardly doesn't hold any sway. If he wanted meter reimbursement, he could have said so, and maybe we would have believed him and told him no anyway.

Since everybody knows a $100 card gets $50 at the shop, getting $50.50 would carry bragging rights, while just asking for just 50¢ isn't likely to piss anybody off enough to get him banned or anything.

Yes children, I'll tell you the story about how I got $50.50 for a $100 card, way back in '13, before your mamas were born. :haha:

Yeah, sorry about that... I think I've mentioned before, one of my first real jobs was doing low level (and I mean low level) tech support for a chain of pawn shops. I am intimately familiar with the environment UT has been describing in this thread. I'm the kind of jaded that UT is trying not to become. :)

This is what it boils down to. There was absolutely no universe in which the kid was going to get the fifty cents, and I believe he already knew it. Assuming he did, he's just wasting everyone's time. A pawn shop is not a therapist, and they do not want to hear your sob story.

I'm getting jaded working with a similar clientele in education. The complete lack of foresight, integration with civilization, and human decency just wears you down.

I'd like to hear a bit of that story, Griff.

I said the same thing to my friend who was working in Social Services in Baltimore 20 years or so ago. What he told me couldn't be unheard. I'm going to hide behind confidentiality on this since a full accounting could lead right to the children involved and frankly would keep anyone with a shred of human decency awake at night.:thepain:

But Griff, there is a major difference between the intent and basis for working in Social Services,
and what UT and Clod describe as their experiences working in pawn shops.

The former are there to promote more humane lives of their clientele,
but it sounds as though squeezing the last penny from each customer is the only goal of this pawn shop.

I realize pawn shops fill a certain (limited) need, and must make a profit,
but as a job UT has made his place sound completely soul-killing.
The $ can't be that good, and I'd soon be looking for work elsewhere.

Let me think on that.

The high school I taught at was one of the poorer ones in the area and had the highest percentage of homeless students in the county. It was soul crushing. As much as I wanted to help the kids, I felt like I couldn't keep my head above the drowning misery. Only three years in I found myself growing more and more cynical and was hardening my heart against what I saw every day. 'S why I made the choice not to go back next year.

Thanks Choc, I can identify with that. Next time I feel whiney I'll take it to a more appropriate thread.

Anything cool come into the shop lately?

You have to take UT's background and personality into consideration.
To him, traveling to this job/place in the morning requires crossing the river Styx.
To someone with a more aggressive personality and less empathy, it could be a challenge, a game.

To quote the great philosopher Randall Graves -

"This job'd be great if it wasn't for the fuckin' customers."

Gold test: scratch the gold on the touchstone

http://cellar.org/2012/gold1.jpg

Apply a drop of nitric acid. If the scratch remains, it's gold. Any other metal is et by the acid.

http://cellar.org/2012/gold2.jpg

Don't get the acid on your fingers.

http://cellar.org/2012/gold3.jpg

The cool thing is this test originated with alchemy, in like the 13th Century, and we still use it.

I'd worked out the meaning of touchstone from the context it's used in, in books.
But I've never heard it actually explained.

Thank you.
I am wiser for reading this post.
And more puzzled by some of the movies that production company Touchstone have put out.

At the end of each year, can you wash the stone and somehow collect all the gold dust and GET RICH?

Or just decorate your hands and sell them as modern art?

So, tell them how you distinguish between 14, 18, 24K gold.

There are different strengths of the acid for 10,14, 18. I haven't seen any 24K yet. I expect I would be able to verify that just by looking at it. The real stuff scratches differently on the stone so a lot of it you can tell just be feel.

Many pieces are stamped in various ways, such as "10K" or "417". If its from this country by law it's supposed to be stamped, but I see a lot of fake stuff stamped, and I see a lot of real stuff not stamped.

If someone leaves a business card on our counter while looking for their pawn ticket, it's just as likely as not to be something like this.

http://cellar.org/2012/cardasdf.jpg