FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WPTA) – At the height of the pandemic, a local pawn shop saw an uptick in customers coming in to buy luxury items. Now with the prices of just about everything going up, pawn shop owners are now seeing those same big purchases come streaming back in to be sold or pawned.
If you are traveling on Calhoun Street, you might stumble upon B&B Loan Company. Last year the business celebrated 75 years.
At pawn shops, you can buy, sell, or pawn. But how does a pawn shop loan work? You bring an item you want to use as collateral for the loan, like jewelry, electronics, or musical instruments. The shop will hold it for a specific amount of time. Once the time period of the loan is up, you either pay back the loan to get back your item, or if you can’t pay it, you lose the item to the pawn shop, which they will then sell.
“An extra expensive guitar or a really fancy game console that is not a necessity. So when they are trying to pay normal bills, those are the things they can give up, the really high-end electronics. So people aren’t just borrowing a little bit of money to go to the grocery store, but it’s like I’m trying to pay rent and that’s what we are kind of worrying about is this recession starting to affect us here?”
Gulley says the typical loan is around $100 to $150, but now they are seeing loans up to $700. According to the National Pawnbrokers Association, about 30 million people who don’t have a bank or access to bank services used pawn shops every year.
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