Pawn 101: You can take me to the fair

/in , ,

The Joy Zone (photo by Forest & Kim Starr)

(with apologies to Lerner & Lowe)

The Friday afternoon of Maui Fair week is always busy at Kamaaina Loan. The reason offers insight into what pawnshops really mean to their communities, rather than what the common opinion is.

If you went to the fair, no doubt you saw some slightly harassed looking guys herding 8, 9, 10 or so kids through the Joy Zone and the food booths. These were good guys — uncles maybe — seeing to it that the neighbor keiki had a good, safe time.

When you start thinking about filling up 10 growing boys and girls with chili and rice, though, the cash outlay can be daunting. Quite a few people turn to the pawnshop for ready cash.

This contradicts the view that pawnshops attract the desperate, the unemployed and the near-destitute. In fact, pawnshops are able to help people in those categories, but as bank economist John Caskey was surprised to find (in a study done in the early ’90s for the Russell Sage Foundation, published as “Fringe Banking: Check-Cashing Outlets, Pawnshops and the Poor”), pawnshops reach a much wider clientele.

Most customers are employed, although many in jobs that feature periods of temporary layoffs. Caskey went to pawnshops and interviewed customers to see who they were and what they depended on the pawn lender to do for them.

He was surprised to find that a substantial part of the business came from ordinary folks who took out pawn loans for a night or weekend on the town.

Not everybody has an ATM card, and if you are contemplating spending a couple hundred dollars at the Maui Fair, there might not be that much in your bank account anyway.

A fast pawn loan could be the answer.

It is for many people.

This was the first year that Kamaaina Loan advertised its pawn loans direct to fairgoers. If you had a good time at the fair with our help, we’re gratified.

The photograph of the Joy Zone comes from the invaluable photographic archive of Maui life being added to by Forest & Kim Starr. Mahalo to Forest and Kim.

Gold and Pearl

/in

So, we’ve been excited at Kamaaina Loan about (maybe) becoming the subject of a reality TV show. Here’s part of that reality: We’d have to leave Maui and tour.

Here’s a http://www.wlbt.com/story/19674098/reality-pawn-star-greets-fans-in-pearl about “Hardcore Pawn” celebrity Seth Gold visiting the shop of our friends in Pearl, Mississippi. Pearl, Mississippi isn’t a very big place, but it has its own pawn shop.

The pawnshop in Pearl

Gold bugs bitten in Texas

/in

From the Dept. of Always Deal with People You Know and Trust (Especially if You are Going to Give Them Gold), a warning tale from Lubbock, Texas, in the Avalanche-Journal:

The business was the target of several lawsuits and a criminal investigation last year over allegations that owner Edwin Chauncey accepted payments in advance for orders to buy rare coins and precious metals and failed to make those purchases.

It looks like rare coin dealer Chauncey’s marks gave him close to $2.5 million and are going to lose about $2 million of that. His coins were certainly rare. Nobody can find them.

Kamaaina Loan has been buying and selling gold for 36 years. ‘Nuff said.Would you give gold to this guy?

Credit score shenanigans

/in ,

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (according to a http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-25/consumers-given-different-credit-scores-than-lenders-cfpb-says.html report by Bloomberg News) has found that in about one case out of 5, your credit score that one of the credit rating agencies tells you is not the same as the score they tell a lender you have.

The story does not say whether the scores given to creditors are usually lower than the same person’s score given to a lender, but the implication is that that is the case:

Specifically, the bureau found that one in five consumers would likely receive a ‘meaningfully different’ score than their lender, potentially resulting in harm to those consumers. At the same time, consumers are unlikely to know about the discrepancy

The story continues:

‘Consumers who have reviewed their own score may expect a certain price from a lender, may waste time and effort applying for loans they are not qualified for, or may accept offers that are worse than they could get,’ according to the study.

 

Of course, if you come to Kamaaina Loan, we won’t ask your credit score, and you’ll qualify for a pawn loan on exactly the same basis as everybody else, whether you are a zillionaire hocking a gold Rolex or a construction worker between jobs raising gas money on his (temporarily unneeded) air compressor.

 

 

 

 

We have regular stuff for sale

/in ,
One shade of gray

One shade of gray

Last week we mentioned that we have weird stuff for sale, for example, an irradiated dime. But we also have good regular stuff. More regular stuff than weird stuff, really.

For example, for just $24.99, you can get a nice pre-owned pair of Oakley Flak shades, gray lenses on gloss black frames, in a case.

 

 

 

 

 

He shoulda texted

/in ,

You may have missed a  funny story in Friday’s Maui News, because it was buried at the end of an unfunny story about a pedophile.

According to police, Damien Black failed as an armed robber because the employee couldn’t read his demand letter . . . Police said previously that, because of poor penmanship, the employee was unable to read the note. The suspect became frustrated and ran off, police said.

It is not clear from the report whether he was trying to get drugs or money, but either way, it was a bad idea, badly executed.

If you need fast cash, much easier to bring your stuff down to Kamaaina Loan, where a friendly pawnbroker will help you. And you won’t have to write anything except your name certifying that the stuff isn’t stolen and that you agree to the contract.

 

Will gold go up or down?

/in

Yes.

But we have no way to tell which it will be. The folks at Lear Capital confess uncertainty, too, but they have produced an infographic that shows the relative movements of gold, silver, stocks, inflation and national debt during presidential administrations. (For sure, gold never stays the same, it is always either up or down, like the grand old Duke of Kent in the nursery song.)

These are hardly the only indexes that matter (money supply growth is always interesting), but for what it’s worth, here it is.

Bring us your gold

/in ,

We will buy it for top price.

Don’t have any gold? This is the time of year when Maui produces its own gold.

Maui’s gold

 

Pawn 101: Lucky we pawn on Maui

/in , , ,

Not needed at our pawn shop

This past week’s episode of “Hard Core Pawn,” the reality show shot in Detroit featured this http://cleverrealitytv.com/2012/09/16/hardcore-pawn-94-news-flash-pawn-shops-sell-your-stuff-les-finds-a-ruby-in-the-rough-a-muscular-woman-rock-em-sock-em-robots-and-crazy-comes-in-all-colors-in-detroit/incident:

A guy then went up to Rich’s window complaining about a generator he bought less than 12 hours ago from the shop. Rich said the thing was ‘as-is’ and there was nothing he could do about it. The guy was very big and loud. Rich was arguing with the guy and Les was watching the confrontation. Rich was pissed off more than usual at this guy and he went to go out front. The customer ripped off he jacket and got ready to maul Rich and his goatee of death. The big security guards were holding the customer back. Les went outside to talk to the guy to try and help. Les said he would check out the generator and then had a repair man fix it. The guy was happy with the end result.

(From the Clever Reality website.)

To be clear, that was Detroit Rich, not Big Rich of Market Street.

Kamaaina Loan doesn’t even have security guards. No need on North Market Street.

The “as-is” sale policy is the same everywhere among the nation’s 13,000-plus pawnshops. That applies to items coming in as well as going out.

If you  bring in, say, a computer or a cellphone, to sell or to get a loan on, you’ll  be asked to turn it on, and, if necessary, enter your password.

You’d be surprised, maybe, how many people bring in a dead cellphone without a charger and expect to get money for it.

Charge ’em up at home or bring your charger with you. (And why can’t you just plug it in to the USB port on the computer on the counter? Because that’s a good way to infect our system with computer viruses.)

 

 

Real-life drama in Wailuku

/in , , ,

While we were busy getting ready for, shooting and then following up on the Kamaaina Loan reality TV show, a different real-life drama was working itself out around the corner:

http://www.mauitime.com/Articles-Cover-Story-i-2012-09-13-76963.113117-Mismanagement-Allegations-May-Doom-The-Wailuku-Main-Street-Association-And-Change-Our-Small-Towns-But-That-Might-Be-A-Good-Thing.html