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President Obama and gold

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At Kamaaina Loan, we are always interested in gold —

buying it, selling it, lending money on it. But not in

 predicting where the price is going.

Not everybody is so cautious. Consider this quote from

the financial advice service Seeking Alpha:

the reality is that President Obama is good for precious metal prices.

We’re not saying he is or he isn’t, but that’s short

and easy to remember. Remember that gold

was around $1720 an ounce on Election Day, but

it had varied by $75 up and down over the past

 30 days. It’s about $1729 as this is posted.

Let’s see where it goes from here. Meanwhile,

if you need cash, we have it and will exchange

 it for gold at the going rate.

Read the whole article at: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1003041-2012-election-president-obama-and-precious-metals

Is this the future of gold prices?

Pawn 101: Check under the hood

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Here’s a story that every pawn shop operator can give

personal testimony about.

A man brought us a book to see what it was worth.

It was volume 2 of a 2-volume edition of one of

Charles Darwin’s books. Ordinarily, volume 2 is

worth more than volume 1, because 2’s tend to get lost

more often. In this case, however, and on Maui, the

book was virtually worthless.

That’s because a complete set, in excellent condition,

can be had on the Internet for about $50. Given

shipping costs from Maui, and considering how

unlikely it would be to find a volume 1 here; and that

it’s a heavy book, it would cost more to marry volume 2

 up with a volume 1 on the Mainland than it’s worth.

However, while the owner was talking about where he

got the book, our assistant was flipping pages. “It’s

worth at least $20,” he told the owner.

Because someone had stuck a $20 Silver Certificate

between the pages.

At last August’s pawnbrokers’ convention, a Mainland

broker told about how a good customer whose husband

had died brought him a fancy hunting knife, hoping

she could get $300 to pay bills.

“I looked under the cotton in the knife box and there

were four one-hundred dollar bills.”

 

A campaign high point

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Every campaign deserves a memorable hula, and kumu hula Patrick Makuakane delivers with the “Birth Certificate Hula.” If you follow the link, you’ll hear him say he was born at Kapiolani maternity just a couple days apart from Barack Obama.

The line “drunk in a taxi” is good.

Performance before enthusiastic audience here: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/288532_Birth_Certificate_Hula_-_Na_Le

Patrick Makuakane

Photo by Kathleen Bender

A sordid crime

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From India, a story about pawn customers murdering a 14-year-old assistant in a pawn shop: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/2-arrested-for-murder-of-boy-in-pawn-shop/articleshow/17012776.cms

As usual, the complete records that pawn shops everywhere keep were a big help to the police in fingering the suspects. Every item in a pawn shop has a ticket that says who it came from, where he lives etc.

There are a few cultural differences between th4 pawn shop in Chennai and any American pawn shop.

For one, it would be unusual to find a young teenager left alone in a pawn shop. Here, you have to be 18 to  be a customer or to work in a pawn shop.

For another, the robbers got away with 6 pounds of gold. Few, if any, American pawn shops keep that amount of gold on hand. For  both safety and financial reasons, they ship out their gold regularly to refiners.

It doesn’t pay to keep gold lying around when you can so easily — and instantly — get a refiner to transfer cash into your account.

But India is by far the world’s biggest A shop in Chennaiimporter of gold. Indians have a strong tendency to keep their wealth in gold, rather than in a mutual fund; so Indian pawn shops probably move a lot more gold in a day than American shops do.

The word “lakh” in the story means 100,000 and is commonly used to count large numbers of rupees. So the robbers got about $1,900 worth of rupees, a tiny amount compared with the $350,000 worth of gold they carried off.

Chennai, by the way, is a huge city, with a population about equal to that of Manhattan.

 

 

Dumb criminals

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From Florida, a story about a burglar who thought he’d fence the sterling silver he’d robbed at a pawn shop.

It didn’t faze him that the pawnbroker demanded that he produce a driver’s license and give a thumb print. (The same procedure is required by law in Hawaii and followed rigorously at Kamaaina Loan.)

Perhaps he thought, they’ll never connect the dots. Little did he know.

All the local detectives had to do — once the victim had reported the loss and provided some identifying information (in this case, a “D” monogram on the silver flatware) — was look in Pawn FINDER for a record of a pawnshop acquisition of a set of flatware with a D monogram.

A simple collar. http://http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49519029/ns/local_news-fort_myers_fl/t/thief-arrested-pawning-silverware/

There are a number of electronic pawn reports in use around the country. Kamaaina Loan has one of the oldest — two actually, one in a secure server for access by Maui law enforcement, pawnreport.com, which is similar to Pawn FINDER; and another, public free service for victims, mypawnreport.com, where victims of theft crimes can post (after filing a police report) information about what was lost.

It’s one thing for a burglar to leave a fingerprint for police to find at the scene. It’s a higher level of stupidity to give up a fingerprint on purpose when fencing the swag. But there are some really stupid criminals out there.

 

Are you too slow to vote?

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Frank Tanabe votes againAt the very least, you should vote because that other guy who’s for all the wrong things is voting this time, and you’ve got to cancel him out.

A more civics-class-positive view of voting is this story from Honolulu that’s catching the world’s attention (or, at least, that part of the world that uses the Internet):

http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/175248241.html?id=175248241

Frank Tanabe, 93 and sick, is voting.

Things you’d rather do on Lanai

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Wrecked yacht from Inside Bay Area

Wrecked yacht from Inside Bay Area

Get dumped in the ocean when your $8-million America’s Cup sailboat crashes.

However, it did happen in San Francisco Bay. Brrrr.

Well, that’s another reason Lanai island owner Larry Ellison won’t be having his Oracle yacht team practicing off Lanai. No boat.

This isn’t the first time one of Ellison’s boats has crashed. In 2011, it happened off San Diego.

Bloomberg News has video of what $8 million worth of highest-tech sailboat looks like after it stumbles:

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/-8m-oracle-yacht-meets-disaster-again-near-san-fran-vKOYYntaQAiI9qvexax08Q.html

Boat captain Jimmy Spithill said, ” There’s no question this is a setback.”

D’ja think?

Sad news — a good customer lost

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Mary Unwin in her Aston-Martin

From England, a story about a minor celebrity pawn customer. Mary Unwin was featured on a British TV show about luxury pawnshops.

Following her divorce, she wanted to buy an Aston-Martin but was about 5,000 pounds (say nearly $10,000) short, so she pawned a diamond ring to get it.

She told the interviewer, “Since when do ladies want to wait for anything.”

Sadly, it looks as if her impatience may have cost her her life.

Since that show, according to the Mail Online, she had remarried her original husband and over the weekend bought a sailboat. (She paid by check, no word whether she had to resort to her pawnbroker.)

Jerry Hobkirk, who owns Falmouth Yacht Brokers, said he had warned the couple against trying to sail the vessel without proper training.

He said: ‘They came in and bought the boat, which was moored up in Falmouth marina.

‘Mrs Unwin seemed totally determined to take the yacht as quickly as possible.

‘She told us she had a ‘navy ticket’, which didn’t mean anything to us but which she said was some sort of qualification.

‘We urged them to go and get some proper sailing qualifications at a local yacht school and assumed she would do so over the next few months.

‘But the next thing we heard she had taken the yacht and set off.’

But it appears that the sailboat wrecked, and Mary Unwin, who couldn’t wait, is missing at sea.

 

 

 

Pawn reality TV coming to Britain

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The Pawn Stars franchise has announced it will televise a British version. The original, Nevada-based Pawn Stars is already big in Britain.

Apparently, television viewers just cannot get enough of us fascinating pawnbrokers — or is it the customers who keep them tuning in? In any event,

“We’re excited that Leftfield Pictures will be producing this new, original version of History’s most successful global brand,” Christian Murphy, senior VP of international programming and marketing for A&E Networks, said in a statement, reports WorldScreen. “This commission establishes a new model whereby History channels around the world will own this phenomenal franchise extension.”

It’s always nice to be a part of history.