“Well, I've never done this before,” they say. They seem a little uneasy as they look around the place, like a cat that's just wandered into a dog show. They're first-timers.
More of them are showing up in pawnshops these days. In fact, 20 months into a recession that has reshaped shopping habits, Omaha-area pawnbrokers say their business — both the making of short-term loans and the buying and selling of secondhand goods — is steady to stronger than usual.
The new customers may have reason for squeamishness. They may feel embarrassed if they're in financial straits. And they've seen dozens of movies and TV shows in which shady doings always happen in a pawnshop.
“You treat them softly and gently,” said Don Hoberman, owner of Mid-City Jewelry and Loan, which bills itself as Omaha's oldest pawnshop. “You spend a little bit of time with them.” He tries to put such customers at ease and takes pains to explain how the shop works.
“We're seeing a lot more first-timers,” agreed John Dineen, general manager of five Sol's Jewelry and Loan shops in the metro area, which has at least three dozen pawnshops in all.
“People are kind of feeling the pinch a little bit,” Dineen said, and the ones bringing in their valuables are not just lower- or middle-class folks. After all, he said, it's the upper class that has lots of stuff.
Sometimes people just want to sell off jewelry that's not being used or surplus items — “it's not unusual for families to have four TVs,” Hoberman observed. Sometimes they pawn the items because they need a little quick cash, a bridge loan to get them past a car payment or utility bill, Dineen said.
Maybe they've been encouraged by “Pawn Stars,” a new reality TV show on the History Channel that films inside a family-run shop in Las Vegas. Despite the cheeky title, the show is mostly a nuts-and-bolts chronicle of customers bringing in their goods, the mundane and the mysterious, to see what they can get for them.
Dineen said “we were a little worried” to hear the show was going to air, but found it generally positive and good at explaining the pawn business.
Pawnbrokers must know — or quickly learn — the details of a bewildering variety of stuff. Knowing what they can resell an item for, in their local market, is the key to survival.
“I've been in this business 55 years and I'm still learning,” Hoberman said.
The goods he sees most often are jewelry and TV sets, in that order. Guns used to be the No.2 item — shotguns always sold out just before hunting season — but have declined with the shrinkage of nearby areas to hunt, he said.
To that list Dineen added power tools — remodeling is up lately — and musical instruments, always a staple of the business.
But much more is crammed into the average pawn shop: computers, video games, electronics of all kinds, DVDs, bicycles, boats, appliances, lawn mowers, leather jackets — not to mention, Dineen said, a yellow golf cart customized to look like a Hummer. A pawnshop is a bit like a flea market crossed with a garage sale and a jumble shop.
Jewelry and gems have always been top items — and often objects of surprise. People who bought jewelry new are often chagrined to learn its intrinsic worth, Hoberman said.
“Part of it is that when you have money in your pocket, you buy it because you like it, the way it looks,” he said. For these customers dismayed to learn how big a retail markup they once paid, “you spend a little bit of time with them,” perhaps show them how to see a gem's flaws through a magnifier or explain gold purity, he said.
The customer's options also are explained:
Ÿ You can sell the item outright, maybe even haggle your way to a better price. The pawnbroker will try to sell it to someone else for a profit.
Ÿ You can pawn it. That is, you take out a short-term loan — usually three or four months — using the item as collateral. Before that term is up, you can repay the loan plus interest and reclaim the item, which is what most pawners do. Or you can extend the loan a month for an additional fee. Or you can let it lapse. In the latter case, the pawnbroker will then try to sell the item to someone else.
Of the customers offering him goods, Dineen said, perhaps 35 percent choose to sell outright while 65 percent choose to pawn.
Hoberman said a lot of his customers have rolled over their loans month after month. The record was a guy who kept repawning a piece of jewelry for 11 years. When Hoberman finally asked him why, the man said it had become a part of his routine — he'd stop at the bar up the street, mosey down to the pawnshop, repawn the jewelry, chat up the staff.
That was in the good old days, 40 years ago, when the business was more fun, Hoberman said.
“People are up against a different wall now, ” he said: Back then, customers tended to be in individual, personal financial struggles; now, everyone is caught in the same economic trauma.
Still, he said, pawnbrokers he knows on the East and West Coasts tell of far more wrenching conditions.
Hoberman, at 78, might seem to have a natural eye for the secondhand — “I'm a Depression baby, born in 1930” — but says he got into pawnbroking by accident. Just back from the Korean War, he joined a plumbing business. It bought up a jewelry shop, started adding other items, and eventually morphed into a pawnshop, Mid-City, which sits just west of the Old Market.
Dineen, a relative kid at 31, began working for store namesake Sol Kaiman while still in high school at Omaha Creighton Prep. After earning a pharmacy degree at Kansas University, he came back to work at Sol's.
“I really like it,” he said, especially dealing with the variety of people: mothers with kids in tow doing the school shopping; couples getting married.
True, the Internet has siphoned off some business over the years, as people sell their stuff on sites online.
“We tell them ‘If you want to do it yourself, you certainly can,'” Dineen said. He said he touts pawnshops' guarantees while cautioning consumers about the pitfalls of Internet selling: the work involved, dealing with strangers, the occasional disgruntled buyer or scam.
“We're more convenient” and try hard to ensure repeat business, he said. “Word of mouth will sink or float you very fast.”
Contact the writer:
444-1140, roger.buddenberg@owh.com
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