Life of a pawnbroker….
Yesterday afternoon, I cruised through Pinellas Park, through a thunderstorm and on a mission: visit local pawn shops, and see what they’ll offer me for three pieces of gold jewelry (and my two fakes).
Here’s the loot:
As Big Tim’s newest employee, I’ve been cutting my teeth at the shop for the past four weeks or so. While there’s still a long way to go and a lot to learn, I’m getting fairly confident with gold appraisals. Because if tested correctly, gold doesn’t lie. (I think.)
So I’m rolling through the neighborhood, appropriately listening to NPR’s Talk of the Nation, and more than half the show is devoted to discussing the rising cost of gold. I wonder if this is a coincidence —Tim’s real reason for sending me on my quest. Either that, or he wanted me to see what other pawn shops are like —you know, pawn shops that aren’t a family business. Those kind of pawn shops.
The latter proved true, for the most part. My first shop was a ways down Park Boulevard, where I was greeted by a friendly woman who appraised my gold pieces, while two other shopkeepers smacked their lips, enjoying their lunch, appeasing their asthmatic Cocker Spaniel with loving pats on the head and chip crumbs, and discussing the down market and surging gold price per ounce. The storefront was small, with a pretty good selection of jewelry and tools, and as I looked closer at the appliances, I realized most of them were as old as I was. I was born in 1986.
I was offered about $210 for my four gold pieces, the highest offer of the day except for one thing–the broken “gold” chain was a fake, and I knew it. Being an honest, undercover pawn shop employee, I thanked her for her time and was off to my next stop. She insisted on straightening out the bend in “my” gold-plated cocktail ring. “At least now you can wear it,” she told me.
Customer service went way down from here. A jeweler in a modern storefront with traditional Asian decor nearly bullied me into buying my three authentic gold pieces, the price jumping from $100, to $115, up to $125 every time I said no. “I don’t really need cash today,” I told him. “I just want to know what these are worth.” “But I can give you cash today,” he said. He wasn’t listening to me.
Another local pawn shop offered me just $70 for my gold —much less than half of what the pieces are actually worth. I feigned ignorance, and browsed a bit before heading out. An archaic Sony Walkman caught my eye, not so much the beat up condition but the $20 price tag. With DVDs for $3, a pretty creepy waitstaff and one to many aisles of overpriced loot piled high, the old reason I’d ever go back was to pet their Doberman puppy.
My last stop was at a local chain, where a sign on the door declared, with some finality “No new loans at this time.”The staff was outfitted in matching polo shirts, and the young lady who tested my gold kept fielding phone calls while I waited in front of her. She wore a frown, and booty shorts. But price was fair enough —$130 —and the shop had a pretty impressive selection of new computers, flat screens and other electronics of use in this day and age.
As I left the fourth pawnshop-that-should-not-be-named, the rain fell harder, hinting at a tropical depression that always seems to be developing on an August afternoon in Florida. Back at the ranch, I checked the gold for the price Big Tim’s would have offered me if I walked in off the street. At $152, it was the best price I was offered all day.
I think the biggest difference between Big Tim’s and the countless other pawn shops in the same zip code is people actually seem to enjoy stopping by the shop. Buyers think our prices are fair, and that we carry good, quality merchandise. We understand our customers might not be having the best day when they bring in their jewelry to pawn, and we treat everyone with respect and help them out as best we can.
Plus, everyone who works at the shop has great taste in music.
But who cares what we think about our shop? Tell us about your time spent at Big Tim’s.
Buying a gun in Pinellas county
Buying and owning a gun in Florida can be difficult. Pinellas County has some strange buying rules. First without a concealed weapons permit or a trade-in you will have to wait 3 (three) business days, for handguns and long guns.
To buy a weapon from a retail store in Florida you have to meet these requirements:
- you must be 18 to own a long gun (rifle or shotgun)
- you must be 21 to own a handgun
- you must pass a FDLE background check
- you must have current ID with the correct address on it
- depending on the county in which you purchase your weapon you will have to wait up to 3 business days unless you have a CWP or trade another weapon in.
Buying a gun online or from out of state.
There are a ton of great places online to buy weapons like www.gunbroker.com or www.budsgunshop.com. After you buy them though your journey has just started. You will have to have your weapon sent to a Florida dealer who then transfers it to you. These fees make buying or collecting guns like old .22′s very difficult to do. For example if you find an old Sears model I on gunbroker.com you could almost double the cost of it between shipping and transfer fees.
Call us first 727-828-1388 or use the online gun transfer form and we will get your information in our system so when you find a gun you are ready to go.
Because we are gun lovers too, Big Tim’s has set a very gun friendly transfer policy. You can transfer up to 5 weapons at a time for $20. That’s it, real simple. Long guns, handguns, $50 gun, $5000 gun, doesn’t matter.
Buying from a private party.
You can also purchase a weapon from a Florida citizen with significantly less paperwork, but you run the risk of the weapon being stolen or subject to seizure if it had been used in a crime. The great state of Florida has some of least restrictive private party laws in the nation. I highly recommend that you do the sale in the store just call us first. If you are buying the gun we can run it through a national database of stolen and wanted weapons. And if you are selling we can test the money for you. There have bee way too many news stories about private gun deals gone wrong.
Please be careful when you purchase from anyone other than a licensed dealer. If the weapon had been stolen or used in a crime you will be facing some conversations with your local LEO and possibly a Federal agent.
Shipping a gun somewhere else.
The rules to shipping a weapon are very complex. I highly suggest you use a FFL to ship your weapon anytime you need to. There is a ton of mis-information and old wives tales surrounding shipping and one mistake could land you with a huge fine….or worse.
If you are a Big Tim’s customer we will ship your weapon for the actual cost of the shipping and $10 for the materials to send your weapon to another FFL.
Why we do this…
A lot of businesses say they are customer friendly but we really love what we do. Seeing the look on our customers’ face when they get that long sought after gun at a reasonable price makes our day.
We know that gun ownership is not for everyone. But if you love guns like we do, send your next purchase to us. We will do everything we can to make it easy.
Call us first 727-828-1388 or use the online gun transfer form and we will get your information in our system so when you find a gun you are ready to go. Whether you purchase from a auction or an individual we can handle the details.
Get the fax number or email address from your seller and we will take over. Once your weapon comes in we call you to let you know it is in our gun log and can be picked up.
We have two convient stores to serve you:
I have no idea.
I’ll tell you what I got though, salad dressing and WD-40. Oh sure I got new grilling tools and a stand for my iPad and some nice cards from my kids. The salad dressing though, was the perfect gift.
I am a hard guy to shop for because if I want something I just buy it. Plus I have really specific ideas about what makes one product better than the other. Then there is the whole I really don’t talk too much, so you really have no idea what to buy me. I really could not care less about most things but for some I have strong ideas about what I want.
I do have a real powerful affinity for big watches, especially one that have “complications” like chronographs and moon phases indicators. But if you ask what type of shirts I like, well, you might be surprised to know that most of the time I wear them inside out because I hate the seams. My family, especially my wife, usually just give up and tell me to go buy myself something, but not this year. So why does a grown man get dressing?
We have two houses and spend most of our time in Pinellas county just west of Tampa. On most weekends though we go north to our lake house just west of Gainesville. My wife is a very good cook and salad is a big part of our dinners. I think I got my love of salad from my father who saves his salad for dessert. I like blue cheese dressing and one time my wife brought me some new dressing home called Lighthouse, and it is the best dressing ever. Unfortunately, Lighthouse is hard to find. After finding we were out of it recently I nearly ran my wife ragged about it til she used it as her opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. I know my wife loves me cause she will drive way out of the way to get me 6 bottles of this dressing and cook me killer Fathers’s day meal, with salad.
I got a really nice card from my 10-year-old boy, Rex, and for the first time I think he actually put some effort into the card and gift. This same kid has of recently spent no time or effort into gifts but I guess my little guy is growing up and he makes me prouder everyday.
My youngest daughter works in the Pawn Shop with me and runs the online presence for the store. This is no small task, what you don’t see in our website you don’t see the 1500+ items we have on Amazon or the same amount on eBay.
We ships 30 to 40 items per day 6 days per week all over the world, online sales amount to 70% of our gross sales. Without this income our chances of making through the growing phase of our store would be bleak. Mallory has a weird sense of herself and her humor is lost on most people.
In our store we get a lot of things that are not in pristine condition or even 100% working. It is a common thing for me to see one of the employees trying clean/fix things and 99% of the time my comment to them is “you know what would make that easier? WD-40″. It is such a common thing that they run to find a can when they see me coming, I have caught them with empty cans in their hand to avoid the confrontation. So what does Mallory buy me of course WD-40, perfect.
It’s has been awhile since I wrote about my life and surprisingly the previous posts were very popular. Sometimes I forget how scary and intimidating it is for people to go into a pawn shop and try to get a loan or buy something. I write these posts to show that we are a family run business and a cold corporate environment is not what to expect. Everyday in the store is different so I’m inviting you to come down and meet us, you never know what you will find.
If you like the website ask for Mallory and tell her because I never will. Keep up with future posts because we have a very exciting announcement coming that will make going to Big Tim’s twice a fun in the future.
This is a rehash of an old post but with the unfortunate demise of Mr Frazetta I thought it seemed timely. My condolences go out to his family and friends.
Even as a kid I have always had a great appreciation of art. I used to go to the Ringling Museum of Art to see the great Renaissance period works with my parents and ever since then it has been one of my favorite places on earth. I’m almost afraid to bring my youngest one there, in fear that he won’t see the beauty that I see in it.
I was always amazed at the scale of the paintings. It was hard for me to even imagine completing one of those great paintings in a lifetime and being amazed that one man could do so many. What I consider art is eclectic, but the things I really appreciate is 14th-16th century Flemish and Christian art. Specifically Rubens. I also have a great love of mechanical things….. cars, planes, automatic wristwatches, and well made guitars.
Having a pawn shop in what is not considered a metropolitan area I never expected “real” art to ever appear in the store or at least very rarely. Well less than ten days with the doors open in walks real art. Not lifestyles of the rich and famous, but, some interesting stuff.
We had a customer come in and sell some coins. Common US coins. He also has some Irish coins, not my thing, but I liked it that he showed me. He also had a good story about the coins and it was obvious that he had enjoyed having them. He also taught me a few things about the coins that I looked up to confirm and his information was correct. I got to check off my learn something new for the day box, cool enough.
Then he says to me “I brought in the lithograph that I talked with you about in an email”…..hmmmm. Here is where our story makes a detour.
Right now most of our marketing is contacting Craigslist sellers and making offers for there stuff. We use a combination of live and software generated offers initially. If any interest is garnered then we get into a “live” negotiation with them. We go through about 300 emails per day. I had missed this last email because had told me he was coming in then followed it up with another email saying he had more stuff.
Once I put a customer in the “coming in box” I generally ignore the follow up emails, because I cant handle any more emails. Not the ideal procedure but necessary right now.
Getting back to the story. He tells me he has a lithograph of Frank Frazetta’s original artwork of “The Lieutenant”. Frank Frazetta is the artist that made the movie Heavy Metal, drew Conan, drew Tarzan and other famous dark, Gothic, sci-fi greats. It was obviously well framed with COA and it was a beautiful Lithograph.
If you don’t know the difference between a good and not good lithograph the difference can be hard to see. Fortunately, for me, I can see it. This particular one had great color separation and really nice paper, well framed. It was a plexi-glass face but that was easily fixed. I didn’t put a number on it and asked for some more time. Graciously he accepted my request.
A few days later my customer came back and sold me the print and it sits in our store today.
I really don’t want to sell everything that is in the store and this print would be one of those things that I am happy to keep. If you are a fan of his art please stop by and take a look. Mr. Frazetta’s work unfortunately it will only go up in value due to his demise.
This is the live recording of the first show recorded in studio live Sunday 04/25/2010 at 820AM WWBA. The first 6 minutes are lead-in commercials so jump those and any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I’m not really much for new things. I have flown planes, started businesses, eaten live eels and seen a midget and a donkey in a “show” and woken up on my motorcycle doing 80mph, so it’s hard to surprise me. If you give me a good wireless connection or a good non-fiction book you might not know I’m in the room with you.
Like you I am good at some really unusual things, and I hate stuff I’m no good at. Tonight I did the first radio show for the pawn shop and man that was really hard. If you have a fear of speaking in public don’t do that.
The night started auspiciously as when we arrived at the station the doors were locked. After calling our producer and learning he wouldn’t arrive until like 15 minutes before the show I decided it was time to get in the building. Let’s just say that Leathermen makes a great product and voila we are in. Then we can’t get the elevator to open and take us to the 10th floor. One nice cleaning lady later we are in the radio station.
From there as the time ticked closer to show time I got more and more apprehensive. When the show started all you get is someone in another room that points at you and the music stops and it’s you and who knows how many other people listening to you. Of course you imagine they are all professional radio critics just waiting for you to misstep.
To imagine what happens next is that you are sitting by yourself on a huge stage, then the curtains go up and it’s you and lights and you have to talk for an hour, 60 minutes, about something that interests you but not many others.
The phones don’t ring, and you have to keep speaking.
I made it through, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I learned something about myself tonight. I also forgot the rush of adrenaline you get from doing those things.
I hope you scare yourself every once and a while, it makes you realize you are capable of more than reading books.
You know how everyone’s job looks easy from the outside looking in? I could work my whole life and never come up with something this good. Unfortunately this spot raises the expectations of possible listeners to a level that might be hard to achieve but here it is anyway..
- my opinion (free and good)
- a first class US postal stamp (nearly free, really good)
To my surprise the guy behind the counter, is the bass buyer and he is the manager of the store. He thanks me once again for the bass, then shares with me some interesting info.
Seems that everyone at McDonald's was very concerned with a pawn shop moving in next door. Everyone was convinced that it would be the death knell of the neighborhood. But to his surprise he has had 2 or 3 people now that have said very positive things about the pawn shop. He told me of his stereotypical view of pawn shops (bad, all bad) and that he had no desire to go into one. When I asked why he did he said, "when I saw you help that little old lady this morning I decided to give you a shot". Moral: You never know who is watching you in life, it pays to be nice, and sometimes you get free sweet tea. Tim