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Been there, done that

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From the Gainesville Times.com, a story about a new ordinance that requires pawn shops to take a picture and fingerprint of customers pawning or selling items, and to make a daily electronic report to the local police.

“We have already begun seeing results that are a direct correlation to this ordinance,” police spokesman Cpl. Kevin Holbrook said.

 

The idea is to make it harder to fence stolen goods.

It’s not a new idea. In fact, Kamaaina Loan was the first pawn shop in the country to make electronic reporting available. For Kamaaina Loan, it was voluntary. Our custom software, pawnreport.com, has for more than 10 years provided Maui police a registry of every item we take in.

Unlike years ago, officers don’t have to come down in person with lists of stolen goods. They can survey our warehouse from their offices.

In Hawaii, pawn brokers and secondhand dealers are required by law to take fingerprints and copies of identification (usually a driver’s license) from sellers. It’s a law that is widely disregarded, especially by secondhand dealers.

They are not required to make electronic registries of purchases or pawns available to police.

You, the customer, should deal only with dealers who do demand ID and thumbprint.

Only the most ignorant of criminals try to fence stolen goods at our pawn shop. If their victim has filed a police report, and we have the goods, then we also have the name, address, photograph and fingerprint of the criminal.

Police love it when that happens. It makes their job so much easier.

SCOTT ROGERS/The Times
Pappy’s Pawn owner Gus Marroquin, right, helps Alejandro Serrano with the purchase of a smartphone at the Browns Bridge Road pawnshop.

 

Pawnbrokers should be smiling

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IDEX Research finds that in 2012 for the first time, sales in America of jewelry and fine watches exceeded $70 billion. It is not clear from this story at National Jeweler whether resales were counted or not.

Our guess is not. But pawnbrokers should be happy anyway.

First, it gives more Americans more stuff to pawn if they feel like it. Second, it provides the wherewithal for pawn shops’ important business in recycled (second-hand, vintage, collectible, historical, retro) jewelry.

Bigger pie, bigger slices.

The percentage increase in the fine jewelry business was not as great as in 2011, but that year the prices of gold and other precious metals zoomed. In 2012, metals’ prices were up, but not as much, so the gain came from more sales.

That is, more Americans felt able to afford fine jewelry and watches last year. As our source for this story at Little Green Footballs notes, that should be taken as a vote of confidence in the overall economy.

In case you are curious, bling beats Bowser. Pets International says dog food sales are around $10 billion.

 

 

 

Pawn 101: ‘Rogue’ gold buyers

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At the risk of sounding like a broken record (do young people even know what that means?), we are returning to the problem of dishonest gold buyers. Because the problem is not going away.

Here we link to an interview with a National Pawnbrokers Association vice president on the subject. Ric Blum makes a couple of points that Kamaaina Loan blog has not spent much time on:

First, “there are more businesses buying gold than just pawnshops. Almost every jewelry store in the country is now buying gold. Gold is being bought in flea markets, barber shops and auto repair facilities. Many are unlicensed and do not have the proper ‘legal for trade’ scales.”

Second, “Another popular scam is gold buying parties. These are usually ‘sponsored’ by a local person who is encouraged to invite all of their friends over to their house and bring their jewelry to sell to a ‘gold buyer.’ Besides not often paying a fair amount to the sellers, there are usually kickbacks being paid to the party sponsor.”

Blum says the problem is tough for law enforcement — especially if you are imprudent enough to mail your gold to somebody on the Internet. Even for local rogue buyers, enforcement is often low on the priority list for overstretched police departments.

You have to protect yourself.

Read the whole thing, but take this away: Do not mail off gold. Do check with several local buyers and compare offers.

We’d add: See us last. You’ll get the highest price that way.

Living and dying in the information age

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Because we track our customers and how they are reached by our advertising, we at Kamaaina Loan are sharply aware that young people don’t read newspapers. So we spend time and effort trying to reach them other ways — this blog is one way.

An initial thought when the news arrived of the Brazil nightclub fire that killed over 230 young people was, things you don’t know can kill you. Don’t they know that setting off fireworks inside a building — especially if the building is a crowded nightclub — is a bad idea?

Today’s Star Advertiser carries a list of some of the most disastrous nightclub fires: Perm, Russia, fireworks ignite ceiling, 152 die; Buenos Aires, flare ignites ceiling, 194 die; Rhode Island, pyrotechnics ignite ceiling, 100 die.

But the partiers at the Brazilian club were mostly university students. Let’s assume they were around 21 years old. Those fires were prehistory to them: a 21-year-old was 18 when the Perm club burned, 13 when the Buenos Aires fire happened, 12 when the Rhode Island club burned.

Even news junkies, at age 21 today, wouldn’t have much sense that letting off fireworks in nightclubs often leads to bad outcomes. You’d think people could figure that out without lessons from history.

Apparently not.

And where were the adults?

A Washington Post picture from the fire

 

 

Stupid ways to die, a continuing series

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There’s an old joke that condo politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small.

Not always the case.

From Bloomberg News, a story about a man who tried to prevent the condo from towing his car off the grass and paid with his life.

Words to the wise from Ken Rutherford

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Ken Rutherford is a well-known name in the precious metals business. He makes and sells the Fisch instrument, a simple but effective tool that tests coins (by seeing whether they fit through calibrated go/no go slots and by a balance test).

He is also the author of a guide to counterfeits published over 25 years ago and revised several times. Here is what he said back in 1984:

The silver and gold business is crazy. Investors send $10,000, $20,000, even $40,000 to firms they’ve never even heard of and whose credit they’ve never checked. They just close their eyes, lick and send the envelopes and send their checks winging away.

Times change. Since Rutherford wrote that, gold scams have migrated to the Internet, and today people click their money away to unknown URLs; or, in a similar but also risky scenario, send their gold (coins, bullion, jewelry or scrap) to some address, from which they hope somebody will send them cash.

Rutherford recommended dealing only with established dealers. That’s still good advice.

He also recommends, when buying gold coins, to TEST EVERY ONE. Still good advice. But hard to do over the Internet.

An honest gold seller in India

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Bloomberg News has a story about T.S. Kalyanaraman, who shook up the gold jewelry business in India by putting pricetags on his products and teaching his customers how to test gold themselves.

Now he’s worth a billion (dollars not rupees) and is the first person in his state of Kerala to own a private jet.

India is the biggest market for gold. Brides are weighed down with gold jewelry, and it is considered auspicious to buy gold on religious holidays (often then presented to a temple).

“We don’t find it tough to sell gold; people love to buy jewelry,” Kalyanaraman said. “The only way to make your wife, sister or lover happy is to give them something that they love.”

In a separate Bloomberg story

Aishwarya Rai, a former Miss World and Bollywood star, is a spokeswoman for Kalyan Jewelers

, the government of India is raising the import duty on gold by 50% to help cover its current account deficit. The government feels it can manage this because the demand, and consequently the price, for gold has been rising, through good times and bad.

India, the world’s largest bullion buyer, increased taxes on gold imports to reduce a record current-account deficit and moderate demand for the precious metal that’s rallied for 12 straight years.

The duty on gold and platinum imports was raised to 6 percent immediately from 4 percent, Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram told reporters in New Delhi yesterday. The tariff will be reviewed if imports moderate, he said. Gold climbed after the announcement.

Increased taxes may reduce gold demand in Asia’s third- largest economy after prices jumped 7.1 percent in 2012 as investors and central banks boost purchases. About 80 percent of India’s current-account deficit, the broadest measure of trade, tracking goods, services and investment income, is due to gold imports, according to the Reserve Bank of India.

Star gazing: Rick to get hitched

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“Pawn Stars” honcho Rick Harrison is getting married to his longtime girlfriend — who he has said will never be on the show —  on July 21. This Los Angeles Times story says Chumlee will be the ringbearer.

No word on whether Elvis will officiate. It is in Vegas, after all.

 

And they say there’s no ham in hamburgers

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News reports say horse DNA was discovered in beef hamburgers sold in Ireland and England. Up to one-third in one sample, according to the Los Angeles Times.

This reminds us of an old joke.

During the Depression, a restaurant was famous for its rabbit stew. Then came World War II and meat rationing.

A loyal customer continued to order the stew but he became suspicious. At length, he asked the chef if there wasn’t some change in the recipe. The chef said:

“I wouldn’t admit this to anyone else, but you’ve been my most loyal customer, so I’ll tell you. Yes, it’s true. Because of the rationing, we had to mix in horse meat with the rabbit.”

But, he hurried to add, “But only 50-50. One horse to one rabbit!”

 

Pawn 101: Fender’s Pawn Shop series

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Pawn shops don’t get a lot of respect — tell us about it! — but from time to time there are indications that some people appreciate what America’s pawn shops bring to the table.

Perhaps the most unusual nod comes from the Fender guitar company, which now has a “Pawn Shop Series” of new productions, described as  “guitars that never were but should have been,” and as homages to the more eccentric models the company introduced (in modest numbers) in the ’60s and ’70s.

Fender doesn’t come right out and say so, but apparently the company is acknowledging that sometimes the only place you really can get what you want is a pawn shop. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need — in the pawn shop.

Somebody said that in the ’60s, we recall.

That headstock isn’t a mistake. It’s the Fender Pawn Shop Super Sonic