Dealing with an unexpected car repair or other bills? You might be eyeing up the local pawn shop for a bit of quick cash if you want to pawn or sell your old stuff. But what is your item worth? For pawn shops who’ve been in business for many years, figuring out how to determine what something is worth is pretty simple. Most pawn brokers with previous experience know how to give their customers a fair price on their sold or pawned item. But with that said, not all pawn brokers know exactly what an item is worth. Here’s how they would typically go about determining the value of a good they don’t see very often.

What can you do on your end to get a fair deal?

Pawn shops with previous experience are pretty good at getting to know the popular merchandise that comes through their doors. It’s not too hard for pawn shops to determine the value of popularly pawned and sold items like gold, silver, or other precious metals. If you have a gold ring, it’s easy to look up the spot price of gold to give you a rough idea of what it’s worth. Pawn shops buy and sell a lot of precious metals, electronics, and even an old video game might be worth something to a pawn broker.

If you take something to your local pawn shop, you’re in essence asking the pawn broker to pay you for an item, even if the pawn shop offers you a loan and you plan on coming back for that item. A pawn shop employer will look at every loan or sale carefully, and treat it as if they are being asked to buy the item outright, even if all you want is a pawn shop loan. The pawn shops price is based on the assumption that not everyone will come back for the items that they’ve pawned. The pawn broker has no choice but to treat your item as if you were never going to retrieve it in the first place.

Will the pawn shop price be fair to you?

The pawn shop understands that most people who pawn their items and ask for a pawn loan really want their things back. If they only wanted the cash, they could just outright sell the item. Most customers who ask for a loan don’t want to forfeit their goods. Pawn shops understand that virtually everyone will run up against hard times and may need an infusion of quick cash. Understandably, customers may not want to part with their beloved and valuable items. But the pawn shop has to weigh that against the fact that a lot of people are not able to get their items back no matter what.

It’s a real possibility that many people will have to forfeit their old jewellery and other items to the pawn shop, so pawn shops price loans based on the assumption that they will own the item at some point and will need to sell that item. The two most straightforward ways that pawn shops determine price is by looking at active markets where those types of goods are sold. eBay and Amazon are often used by pawn brokers to figure out an item’s worth, especially if the pawn broker is not familiar with the value of that particular item.

The good news is, customers can also look up these prices too, so the transactions with a pawn shop are typically democratic and transparent. If you have old jewellery to pawn or sell, visit us at Melbourne Pawn Shop today for an infusion of quick and easy cash.