pawn shop bargain

[cziv]

The hardness of silver lies between 2.5 and 2.7on the Mohs scale of hardness, which is harder than gold but softer than copper, and it has a specific gravity of 10.5.

They're probably so hard because they're small bars and 1 oz bullion coins, I thought of that after I posted. :foot:

 

[Morrow]

Another definition of class might involve telling the "old man who has never heard of ebay" that he had grossly under priced the item and then spending a few minutes agreeing on a fair deal for you both.

Karma's a bitch.

Riiiiiiiiight....because pawn shop owners are always about class.

 

[Stelth]

I see this getting thrown out all the time, but how does one get "screwed" by a pawn shop? Nobody forces you to accept the price they offer for anything.

note: I have nothing to do with pawn shops, haven't been inside one for over 20 years.

So you've avoided pawn shops for 20 years because of their great deals?

 

[geegee]

I want to believe!

 

[arjung]

When you deal with places like pawn shops you go by traditional bartering rules. If you don't know the full value of the product and you get the short end of the stick that is how it works.

If that is silver, the buyer got the knife in a perfectly legitimate. Kudos to you! It's a pretty slick looking blade.

 

[CWL]

So you've avoided pawn shops for 20 years because of their great deals?

Avoid? Believe what you want. I haven't needed to pawn or buy.

 

[thebrain]

What I meant by getting screwed entails a few long stories but to shorten them I will just tell the part that matters .One was my sister she went to buy a few things and when we left they had kept her ID and said they had no idea what could have happened to it (I was there for that one and it was really slick how they stole it) .One other time I went with a friend of my brother to pawn some things(he had been kicked out of his home by his abusive father). He needed food and some new clothes for work more than he needed his stereo that week . When we went back to unpawn his stuff they told him it was gone, he asked why and they said "we sold it because we didn`t think you would come back" he said he would call the cops and they said "go ahead who will they believe?".

 

[mat_890]

I know its been said before, but have it tested. If not for you, for your son. It would be a damn shame if he hit a rough patch one day only to find out a prized heirloom was just a random mix of metals.

I really hope its real.

 

[singularity35]

Knowing the value(in dollars) of that thing might be prudent. You never know what the future will bring.

 

[Guyon]

Congratulations. Great find.

Just for verification, would either of these tests be valuable to you?

http://www.helium.com/items/176936-how-to-test-for-pure-silver

 

[wreckager]

I agree most items in a pawn shop are horribly overpriced.However,sometimes they do have great deals.I went into my local pawn shop and found a perfectly fine,brand new in box, Spectrum zippo for $25.considering where i live (australia) they are upwards of $50 dollars if bought new from a dealer

Great find:thumbup:

 

[nightman]

I live in a major city and visit pawn shops occasionally. The few times I ran across a good price on something it had to be because they did'nt realize the value of what they had. I felt no obligation to inform them since they are in the business of knowing what things are worth. A good price at a pawn shop is hard to find where I live.

 

[KennyB]

I remember I found an old gold coin in my grantfather's collection. I took it to a shop to see if they would want to purchase it, and the owner placed it on an old mechanical scale like you would see in science glass. Said that it was a little off, and probably a counterfeit. Well, I went ahead and had it certified by a numismatist society, and sold it for something like 5 times the value that I had even asked the pawn shop for. People can say, "Well, they didn't want to pay the price you paid for a coin that might not be good," but I knew enough about coin collecting and had my own scale and knew what he was saying was bunk; so I wound up getting the full value of the coin.

The only reason for that is because I was a coin collector at one time, so I knew what I was doing. The guy I dealt with had to run a pawnshop, and deal with collectibles of all kinds of variety. It's only natural he'd make a mistake, especially when you're talking about the money that the coin was worth as it was exceptionally rare and often counterfeited. Pawn shop owners are shrewd businessmen, but they're still only human, so they really can't be expected to be able to catch the real small subtleties like this.

 

[cziv]

I live in a major city and visit pawn shops occasionally. The few times I ran across a good price on something it had to be because they did'nt realize the value of what they had. I felt no obligation to inform them since they are in the business of knowing what things are worth. A good price at a pawn shop is hard to find where I live.

Agreed, plus sometimes they'll have got the item for almost nothing and it's been sitting around so why not double their money and let a $100 item go for $50 if they've got $25 in it and it's just collecting dust.

 

[A.P.F.]

I don't doubt the deals exist, I bought both my Nortons in the mid 70s for $500 a piece, you can't touch one these days for under 5K-6K.

If those have a Combat engine in them, I am really going to cry!

 

[a2d2]

Another definition of class might involve telling the "old man who has never heard of ebay" that he had grossly under priced the item and then spending a few minutes agreeing on a fair deal for you both.

Karma's a bitch.

I wouldn't feel bad about screwing over a pawn shop. Pawn shops are pretty scummy businesses that capitalize on peoples misfortune(not everyone goes in there because they are a junky); why feel bad when they get a bad deal every now and again, it's their game, don't feel bad for winning. If this old man was selling at a flea market I'd likely feel differently.

 

[HandofCod]

Here in Oz we don't have very many pawn shops but we do have Cash Converters - the most lecherous company you will ever see. I will never set foot inside one of those again after going in there about 5 years ago to sell a mountain bike. They prey on poor families and make a business of ripping people off. The goods they sell are mostly either items they keep from those same poor families or stuff that's stolen.

Either way they feed on people's misfortune and give nothing back to the community.

 

[Stelth]

Here in Oz we don't have very many pawn shops but we do have Cash Converters - the most lecherous company you will ever see. I will never set foot inside one of those again after going in there about 5 years ago to sell a mountain bike. They prey on poor families and make a business of ripping people off. The goods they sell are mostly either items they keep from those same poor families or stuff that's stolen.

Either way they feed on people's misfortune and give nothing back to the community.

Sounds exactly like a pawn shop to me.

 

[T. Erdelyi]

If those have a Combat engine in them, I am really going to cry!

I had a '69 that someone had turned into a chopper before I got it, (we fixed it though) and my '71 was a Combat Commando, we spent two years restorin' it we even took all the case covers off and lapped the mating surfaces, (no more oil leaks).

Paid $500 for that one to put $3500 into restorin' to factory original then I fell on hard times and sold it for a Grand to some idiot who took it apart and made, you guessed it, a chopper out of it.

I always wanted a Hi Riser and an Interstate when I was in to the Limey bikes.

 

[Bigfattyt]

If I were you I would buy a perfect lab diamond and sell it at that pawn shop as a flawless diamond mined in South Africa.

If he cannot tell silver, he surely cannot tell the difference between manmade and real diamonds!!

If I were you I would buy a perfect lab diamond and sell it at that pawn shop as a flawless diamond mined in South Africa.

If he cannot tell silver, he surely cannot tell the difference between manmade and real diamonds!!

Actually, no one would really be able to tell the difference between natural diamond and a man made one, if the maker of the man made stone did not add a chemical marker.


I had the opportunity to work at a place that made industrial diamond drill bits (Polycrystalline Diamond Cutters ) for drilling in the oil and natural gas (and impact bits for mining applications as well).

One interesting thing that my company did was to take natural stones and run them under a million + pounds per square inch, and take them up to 2300 degrees, and change the color. If they have the right trace elements in them. I have held in my hand, a 48 carat cut weight stone in my hand. I also ran one stone on my machine and had a 16 carat stone fall to pieces in my hand after the press run (would have been nice if the guys I was running the stone for would have told me it already had the stress lines in it, and they were expecting it to fracture).

Anyway, it is only a matter of time, until there is a flood of man made diamonds on the market with no way to tell them apart from natural stones. The only thing keeping manufacturers from making these stones (aside from the initial very high cost of the equipment, and having a ready market for "undocumented stones") is their own honesty.

My company did not make stones, as the profit margin was lower. The runs for changing the color were very very profitable.



Interestingly enough, you can also make rubies and other stones that are indistinguishable from natural stones (again depending entirely on the makers honesty in adding the trace chemical that makes them readily identifiable as man made).




As to the original post, and the discussion of the "screwing the pawn shop". I have had many dealings with a pawn shop. The same place I bough about 8 or so fire arms, and all kinds of ammo, clips, holsters, etc. After all that, the place still treated me like dirt. Acted like I was bothering them.

Pawn shops are in the business of knowing what the value of their stuff is. They know what they paid for something, and if they don't, it is not my obligation to let them know.

He asked the guy if the price listed the item was what he really wanted to sell it for. I look at pawn shops as garage sales. It is their stuff, and they are selling it for what they want.