What was he thinking?

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From Albuquerque, a short piece about how pawn brokers and police interact to catch bad guys.

There’s something new here. We have often cautioned that pawn shops are bad places to sell stolen goods, since we take your name, address, phone number, driver’s license and thumb print; plus each transaction is videotaped.

To heck with Sherlock Holmes examining footprints in the snow.

But, in Albuquerque, there was one thief who pressed his luck even further. If you watch the report, it says  a regular customer at University Pawn snatched a tray of chains and ran out. Then went to a different pawn shop to sell them.

What was he thinking?

The KOAT report mentions a pawn shop network that tracks thefts in Albuquerque and also gives the example of a woman whose ring was stolen who emailed pictures to every pawn shop, resulting in a recovery.

First, you have to have a picture available to email. Second, on Maui, you can use mystolengoods.com, Kamaaina Loan’s exclusive website where crime victims can post information about their losses. That simultaneously alerts both our pawnbrokers and the Maui police, and provides descriptions.

The irony here is that we make it as easy as possible to alert us, and we (helped along by state reporting laws) make it as hard as possible for thieves to fence at pawn shops in general and our Maui pawn shop in particular. Well, that makes it less likely, on the whole, that a recovery will be made through our shop.

 

 

 

Class acts

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A repeated theme here at Kamaaina Loan blog has been the turnaround in the attitude toward pawn shops in the press, probably due to reality teevee more than anything else.

Over the weekend, a kind of milestone in this process occurred when the New York Times published an admiring piece about pawn shops for rich East Siders, based on a 250-year0-old English pawn shop’s first branch in Manhattan. Not only that, although the story was in the “Wealth Matters” section, far inside the bulky newsprint version of the Sunday Times, for a brief time today, the story was on the front page of the Times’ internet edition, until it was pushed off by fresh Chris Christie scandals.

Their fancy East Side store

Their fancy East Side store

Now, as a pawn shop, we are happy to have the Times look upon pawn shops as public-spirited businesses, or at least as public-spirited as the big banks the paper writes about all the time. But we do have a couple of comments.

First, the Times is about a year late on this story. Reports about pawning by the rich have been common fare on such sites as CNN for a long time now. Second, the Times may have been late, but its reporting (by Paul Sullivan) was superior:

The high-end portion of the industry is betting that with comparatively lower pawn rates and an ability to fulfill even large loan requests in a day or two, it will be able to build its business on happy repeat customers. Paul Aitken, founder and chief executive of Borro, said he attributed repeat business to the human desire to spend today without thinking about tomorrow.

“Entrepreneurial people like to do things on the spur of the moment, and they’re probably not the best planners,” he said. “When they have money in their pocket, they like to buy luxury goods. When they don’t, they like to use those goods to get money for their next venture.”

And that is how he ends up taking a Mercedes McLaren in as collateral for a loan.

That’s an aspect — we are not necessarilu endorsing it — we haven’t seen in numerous other stories about high-end pawn.

Third, high-end pawn is not, as Sullivan’s story implies, something that arose when banks tightened credit following the Panic of 2008. It’s been part of the business all along. It has probably extended its catchment area since 2008.

Our Wailuku pawn shop. We have a fish.

Our Wailuku pawn shop. We have a fish.

Fourth, while our pawn shop at 96 N. Market St. is not as flossy as Suttons & Robertsons Upper East Side shop, our Private Viewing Room is just as swank as S&R’s, what with its Chinese antiques and paneling. And — something S&R does not seem to have — its private entrance, for those rich borrowers who don’t want the neighbors to know they are pawning the McLaren. (Actually, in Hawaii law pawn shops cannot make loans on McLarens, but you get the concept.)

private

Fifth, the bottom line is, as always with pawn loans, would you rather be turned down by a banker or accepted by a pawn broker. Because pawn brokers lend on collateral, and the extra scrutiny that has scared bankers into holding onto their money means nothing to us. Gold is gold, a diamond is a diamond, a Rolex is a Rolex, whether the stock market is booming or crashing.

A ‘blue feather’ day

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At our Maui pawn shop a “blue feather day” is one when someone says, “Gee, it’s been ages since anybody brought in a nice 2-carat diamond,” and the door opens and in walks a nice 2-carat diamond.

alice

Or, as pawnbroker Stefen explains her blue feather day Thursday:

“I was working in 50 N.Market Street [where we sell golf clubs] on the new inventory system. While putting the new price tags on the golf clubs, I remarked to my co-worker Bob how nice a certain vintage set of clubs were. Bob then said that the clubs should go on eBay because it was gonna take a special person to buy those clubs because of their age.

“I noticed how nice the wood clubs were and said that they were the type of clubs Alice Cooper would appreciate since he’s bought vintage clubs from us before. Bob agreed and said that he thought Alice would like them as well, or maybe some kind of sporting club that could put them on display. After that, I went about finishing tagging the rest of the golf clubs and left to go do more work in another room.

“Not an hour later did Bob call me in the room I was working to tell me that Alice Cooper had just come in and bought those Vintage Clubs! I said ‘No way,’ but Bob told me that he had told Alice Cooper about the conversation we had just had about him and the clubs and Alice said, ‘They’re mine now.’ Both of us couldn’t believe that Alice Cooper had just come in and bought those clubs within an hour of us saying he should have them. What a coincidence huh?”

Big Rich picks up the story. “Alice Cooper visits the store from time to time, and he has bought things, not only clubs, before; but he doesn’t come in every week or every month.”

The clubs, a set of three woods in beautiful condition, had been around for a while (nobody remembers exactly how long) and had just been put out on retail display. “It’s like those clubs were calling, ‘Alice, Alice Cooper. Come by Kamaaina Loan, come by Kamaaina Loan.’ “

Rich adds, “You better believe we gave him a great price.”

Alice, of course, is a huge golf fan and even titled his autobiography, “Alice Cooper, Golf Monster.”

The police can’t do that

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From here on Maui, we have been watching with concern  a move by the Honolulu police to force Oahu pawnbrokers to use international software company proprietary software to report pawn loans and purchases of secondhand goods. Kamaaina Loan is not opposed to electronic reporting of pawn transactions; we have done it to Maui police for years and, in fact, were the first pawn shop anywhere to do it.

But the off-the-shelf software can be used abusively, and this story from the Dallas Morning News confirms our fears — pawn reporting software is being used to profile citizens and harass them. It is more than a little startling that the Dallas police cooperated with the reporter, since their behavior is clearly unconstitutional, but they not only admit it, they celebrate their misbehavior:

Every two weeks, Franklin circulates a list of his top 10 “pawnees” to other areas of the department. Tarves ranked No. 3 in May for selling and pawning dozens of items in two weeks, including jewelry, gold, computers, vacuum cleaners, sports memorabilia and watches.

“We’re not picking on pawnees, not picking on pawnshops — just looking at things that look suspicious,” Franklin said.

People usually make the watch list if they have had prior run-ins with the law along with suspicious activity. Several sales of the same type of item — such as selling multiple TVs — also raise red flags.

Note that not only do the Dallas police not have probable cause to suspect these “top 10” customers of a specific crime, the police do not even have evidence that a crime has been committed.

While the story says that the police use the software to try to match records of stolen items with records of pawn transactions — something legal and even smart policing — it makes clear that they are also using the software to generate freeform — and evidence-free — hit lists:

Not many people on pawnee lists obtained by The Dallas Morning News had been arrested on property crime charges, including Tarves. He has been convicted of theft by check and has two check forgery charges pending.

Franklin said the charges can be difficult to prove because even if the goods were stolen, authorities would have to prove that the seller was the one who originally stole them.

But police have the person on their radar and might connect them to other crimes. Franklin said he gets positive feedback within the department.

Get that? “even if the goods were stolen”

The software — there are two main competitors in this area — can be used in even more abusive ways. Although the story does not indicate that Dallas police have done so, police can equip squad cars with interactive computers that track persons they “think” are suspicious and alert cops on patrol when they enter a pawn shop.

Think about that. And let’s take it out of the realm of pawn shops. Suppose police think you are a shoplifter, based on nothing more than that some computer program profiled you for “shoplifter-like” behavior;  and then, every time you walk into Macy’s, the local patrol car comes by to follow you.

You’d be outraged, we think, and rightfully so.

 

 

A few words about protecting artwork

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Via Pawn Times, a link to a page of advice from Beverly Hills Pawn (where the movie stars go, so they say) about how to protect your artwork, particularly prints, lithographs and photographs.

Take good care of her

Take good care of her

Our Maui pawn shop also takes artwork in on pawn, and like Beverly Hills Pawn, we store it in climate-c0ntrolled spaces. The post has some cautions about storing your stuff at home, and that goes double for Maui, where humidity and mold are worse problems than in Southern California.

The post does not say it, but protecting art is cheap (how much can a Mylar sleeve cost?) while having a conservator restore it is expensive.

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According to this Huffington Post story, in the five years 2007-2012, the number of pawn shops in the United States grew from 6,400 to 10,000.  We’re not too confident in the numbers. Nobody really keeps track, and other sources claim the country has about 12,00o pawn shops. santy If it is correct that there are 3,600 more pawn shops than there were before the stock market swoon of 2008, then that’s 2 new ones a week. It also means there are about as many pawn shops as McDonald’s hamburger stands. Whatever that says about us. On the other hand, the number of gas stations dwarfs both pawn shops and Mickey Ds at 159,000, but that’s down from 200,000+ 20 years ago (and down from over a quarter of a million in the cheap gas era of the 1950s). (Numbers from a website called howmanyarerthere.org, where you can play this comparison game all day long.) Well, whatever the exact number, the Huffington Post story fingers the reluctance of the big banks to lend to “non-standard” people and the decline of the “community banks,” which were allegedly a source of money for such folks in  the past. We doubt the accuracy of that. The most we’d accept is that smaller banks were prepared to make smaller loans that the big ones wouldn ‘t bother with. On the other hand, really small banks couldn’t lend much, because regulators tried to prevent them from making loans that were a large fraction of their capital. On the third hand, for Huffington, “small” means up to $100 million, which is enormous by pawn shop standards. Even the big chains don’t have total loans that approach that. Most of those 10,000 pawn shops do under a million a year, probably. But the point, made to Huffington by our friend Jerry Whitehead (a consultant who advises Kamaaina Loan) is that:

pawnshops are focused on consumers who are “getting forgotten in the banking system.”

We’d put it another way. Unlike other lenders, pawn shops don’t turn away anybody. If you’ve got collateral, we’re good to go.

Pawn 101: Pawn shop scammed

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Is that real gold?

Is that real gold?

Here’s an odd little story — in its entirety — from the Bradenton Herald:

MANATEE — A Manatee County pawn shop has been ripped off by a jewelry fraud artist.

Officials with America’s Super Pawn, 5612 15th St. E., say they paid out $550 for what they thought was a 10-karat gold chain with charms, but which turned out to be worthless metal, according to a Manatee County Sheriff’s Office report.

The transaction occurred on Oct. 1, but the pawn shop manager was just notified Tuesday by the company’s jewelry analysis expert that the gold chain was fake and of no value, the report states.

The pawn shop manager notified the sheriff’s office.

It is believed the subject who sold the necklace has sold other fake jewelry to pawn shops throughout Manatee and Sarasota, the report adds.

Odd because at our Maui pawn shop, we test all gold coming in. It is possible to fool the tester, but the touchstone is seldom fooled by something like a chain. Didn’t Manatee Pawn Shop test?
Maybe it was busy and they were in a rush. So if you ever have to wait a minute or two during the Christmas rush because the customer ahead of you in line is having her chain tested, that’s why. Always test.
Odder yet is the hint that the same scamster has hit other shops. Don’t any of the shops test? We know some Florida pawnbrokers, and we are sure almost all of them do test.
Has somebody in south Florida gone to the trouble of making some trick chains that defeat the touchstone? It could be done, but it would be a lot of work, both to manufacture the fake chains and then to pass them out in $500 lots all over a county.
Read more here: http://www.bradenton.com/2013/12/10/4881419/manatee-pawn-shop-ripped-off-by.html#storylink=cpy

A depressing tale of fake pawn shops

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The Milwaukee Sentinel has uncovered a depressing — some might go so far as to say, slimy — story about how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms goes about intercepting illegal gun sales. It involves treachery, sales of illicit drugs, recruitment of mentally-damaged mules . . .

And that’s just on the law enforcement side.

Among the tactics was setting up fake pawn shops. Thanks ATF. It’s not as if legit pawn shops like our Maui operation don’t have to struggle against an undeserved — we think — reputation of pawn shops as fences and exploiters.

How bad did it get? What’s known is very bad, but there are reasons to suspect the situation is worse than the public knows:

The ATF refused the Journal Sentinel’s request for an interview with Director B. Todd Jones or other agency officials to address findings of the investigation. Instead, the agency provided a written statement that failed to answer any questions, and spokeswoman Ginger Colbrun suggested reporters read ATF news releases issued after the stings.
The use of falsefront businesses to capture crooks has a long and, at least in the hands of journalists, distinguished history. The Chicago Sun-Times and the Better Government Association once set up a bar called the Mirage (get it?) to capture corrupt city inspectors. They won a Pulitzer Prize.
One difference between them and the ATF was that the journalists were not themselves criminals.
As more revelations come out — and it looks like both parties are ready to have Congress investigate — it is unlikely that there will be local examples. Hawaii pawn shops do not generally deal in firearms.  But on behalf of our honest colleagues on the Mainland, we are just as angry as we know they are.

Badge of shame

Badge of shame

Read more from Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/watchdogreports/atf-uses-rogue-tactics-in-storefront-stings-across-the-nation-b99146765z1-234916641.html?ipad=y#ixzz2n0kGefcZ
Follow us: @JournalSentinel on Twitter

Pawn 101: Pawn records aid Maui police in death investigation

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Kamaaina Loan’s pawn manager Krystal Cabiles is famous in the pawn shop for her steel-trap memory for names, faces and phone numbers. Krystal did it again today, when she matched a photo that Maui police had posted on Facebook with a pawn customer she had seen — just once — two months ago.

The body of a man was discovered a few days ago on the grounds of a Lahaina resort, and police retrieved a driver’s license. But the information on it led to a dead end, and police could not trace the man’s family. They are withholding information about him until they can find them.

They didn’t even know where on Maui the man had been staying.

Krystal says she was “making my nightly Facebook rounds” when she saw the picture. She recognized it. The man had done a pawn loan with us, and the records gave his name, address, fingerprint etc. Even better, although visitors don’t have to tell us where they are staying (we use their home addresses), the man had mentioned the resort where he was staying, and even why he was on Maui.

At police request, Kamaaina Loan blog is withholding that, too, until the family can be found. But it was a good thing the man had mentioned where he was staying, because he forgot his driver’s license. Our pawn broker Alan Cooperstein drove all the way to the west side to return it.

So this morning, Big Rich was able to tell the police where the man  had been staying, and using a credit check program, supplied a list of what appeared to be his relatives and, possibly, the name of the man ‘s family business.

As this is posted, police are following the leads.

As Big Rich rec

Richard Dan on Maui

Big Rich, tracer pf lost persons

alls, this was not the first time his pawn records solved a mystery. Once, years ago, a pawn ticket found on the body of a murder victim in Los Angeles led police to Big Rich, who had the victim’s pawned radio, which had his Social Security number on it.

 

Pawn 101: Pawn shops get more respect

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As an old newspaperman, it pains me to say it, but TeeVee is capable of performing feats — so far as public opinion goes– that print just cannot match. Case in point: Making pawn  shops respectable in the public eye.

We have mentioned a couple of times that Fender has a “Pawn Shop Special” line of instruments and amplifiers, but while this shows a certain degree of respect, it is not general. Rather, the theme seems to be that musicians, who unless they hit the big time lead a rather hand-to-mouth life, rely on finds of still-good but cheap equipment in the retail departments of pawn shops. Nice but not a full-throated endorsement of the place of pawn shops as bankers to those abandoned or ignored by the big financial institutions; or even of just the convenience of no-credit-check, no-hassle (as we say in our Maui pawn shop: NO HUMBUG) borrowing.

(For context, there are other businesses that are so chancy that in a sense new entrants rely on the lack of success of previous risk-takers. Restaurants have a very high closure rate, much higher even that the generally high failure rate for all small businesses. So there is always a lot of used equipment for sale: professional refrigerators, mixers, coolers etc. Since it’s commercial-grade, it tends to be rugged and if it hasn’t been abused,   reliable. But the depreciation rate is worse than for cars. We have seen a commercial mixer, in good shape, that goes new for $60,000 go at auction for about a grand. Some pawn shop operators do get involved in used restaurant equipment. Kamaaina Loan occasionally buys at foreclosure auctions, rather than direct from restaurateurs or as forfeitures on loans — most collateral we accept is hand-carried to the counter, not possible with most restaurant equipment — and resells to new hopefuls. But it seems unlikely that Hobart will be coming out with a “Pawn Shop Special” line of slicers. There’s no inherent reason that musicians should feel more attuned to shopping at pawn  shops than hot dog-stand owners, but they do.)

Which brings us to today’s special pawn shop news, a real breakthrough — as we see it — in the image of pawn, and due largely to the impact of reality pawn shows, especially top-rated “Pawn Stars.”

In fact, the Pawn Stars are the stars of the new TV commercial by Microsoft that uses Rick of  “Pawn Stars” to bash Google Chromebooks. The theme is that a used Chromebook is not worth anything to a pawnbroker because it’s “not a real laptop.” This digs at Chromebooks’ bargain-basement approach which means it can do work if you are on-line but not so much if you are not connected to the Web.

Well, being used as authority for dissing other brands is not quite in the league of being called the Cadillac or Tiffany of whatever, but it’s a big step up from being seen as the resort of down-and-outers and burglars.

The way we see it, pawn shops haven ‘t changed very much. Most Americans have  never been inside one. Maybe one in four have used pawn shops for one purpose or another. TeeVee has given the rest of them a look inside, and what they saw was far different from what they saw when Rod Steiger played
The Pawnbroker.”

All this could lead to some long thoughts about how mass opinion gets formed. No question the movie “The Pawnbroker” had as much to do as any other episode to form the public reputation of the pawn business, even if nine out of 10 Americans never saw it.

But the ones who did spread the meme of pawnbrokers as avaricious, hard and unscrupulous. Nine out of 10 Americans have never watched “Pawn Stars,” either, but the one-tenth have brought it up in conversations with friends, and print and on-line media have written about the phenomenon. So that a new ingredient in the froth of public perception has been added, and overall a positive one.

Thanks, Rick.