Pawn shops - ever get any luck?

jprime84

jprime84

Joined
Jul 7, 2014
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I have seen the occasional post where someone finds something cool at a pawn shop. I decided to burn my lunch hour visiting 6 local pawn shops in the city where I work.

Talk about GARBAGE knives. I only found one kershaw and one spyderco in one of the shops, and they were beat up chinese models. The rest were gas station knives or crazy klingon looking weapons. Seeing the rest of the stuff in the shop it was tough for me to imagine someone bringing in a quality knife. What kinds of cities are you finding nice blades in the pawn shops?
 
Most I see are junk.

I picked up a couple case knifes from pawn shops for decent prices. I didn't get any steals though.
I have had luck with non-knife items that are a little more common.

A list of my most memorable Pawn shop purchases:

Case peanut SS blue bone $21
older Case med Stockman CV $30
simple Seiko watch $50 or somewhere in there
Oakley Whisker polarized sunglasses $75
some decent Diamond Studs for my fiancé before we were married.
Leatherman Charge with sheath and bits $22 (my best deal) most Leatherman's I see are close to retail so I was psyched to find this one.

FAKE Benchmade folder $20. (learning experience when I was just starting out) wasn't a very good fake either, I just didn't know much about it at the time so I took a chance and lost.

Nothing to write home about, but I still look from time to time just for fun.
I seem to find better stuff in small towns. I don't visit large city pawn shops often, but most of the deals above were random smaller pawn shops. So I would head to the run down shops and not the EzPawns and such.
 
"Lucky finds" usually happen after a lot of wasted hours spent looking. I haven't actually found a decent knife in a pawn shop, but I did find a sweet display case in a flea market for $60. A 9-drawer, felt lined display case with a top that opens and has a storage area above the drawers. Old, solid wood, very much like some of the modern Gerstner chests that I see on A G Russell's sites.
 
My experience with pawn shops, cheap "Fury" knives selling at 300% markups. :thumbdn:

I have even worse luck at estate sales, broken junk at 10X the actual value. A broken Imperial knife with shrunken scales for only $20? How could I refuse? :rolleyes:

Sometimes have luck at garage sales picking up a good vintage user now and again for a fair price, but almost never have found anything in collectible condition.
 
Theres a team gemini at a pawn shop near me, its been there almost a year, I keep checking on it and after its sat long enough im goint to try to make a reasonable offer. They also have some cool discontinued stuff from other companies like kershaw, spyderco and mod.
 
I got a Tom Brown Tracker for $75 and a Gerber 06 Auto for $35. Since I browse there often they looked them up after I bought them. They said they won't do it again. Pawn Shops now have employees put stuff online so the "deals" are very hard to get now.
 
Ya'll got rotten luck. The first time I went to a pawn shop, they had about 10 or so kabars of various makes and models, a few no names POS knives and....... a German Officers dagger. Ah, would that I had my cash with me........
 
legato1 said:
Theres a team gemini at a pawn shop near me, its been there almost a year, I keep checking on it and after its sat long enough im goint to try to make a reasonable offer. They also have some cool discontinued stuff from other companies like kershaw, spyderco and mod.
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How much were they selling it for?
 
My most recent lucky find was a solid steel brick hammer. Not an Estwing, but it's still a good, stout model, and only $6.
 
I have found with pawn shops, it is often location, location, location.

If they are near more affluent areas, you find surprise rarities. As the pawn shop gets to worse areas, or smaller towns, it gets down to mostly overpriced garbage.

The other problem I see is similar to antique stores. Now that knives have become greatly collectible, prices for knives at pawn shops seem to have gone up.
 
Got a Cuda maxx 5.5 d Ralph design the other day for 20$. I didn't know what it was when I bought it, just knew it was well made, smooth, huge, and he accepted 20$
 
I did a search on ebay for benchmade. One of the newest listing was for a full size Griptilian from a pawn shop in Oklahoma.

The "buy it now" price?

$9.99

There was absolutely nothing wrong with it.

I just happened to carry it today.
 
bamarammin87 said:
Got a Cuda maxx 5.5 d Ralph design the other day for 20$. I didn't know what it was when I bought it, just knew it was well made, smooth, huge, and he accepted 20$
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Dude! Congrats!

I have one incoming and I paid $250... and that was a good deal.
 
My local pawn shop never has any good knives NEVER.
I don't think they would know a good knife if someone brought one in.
All I ever see are s&w "spec ops" knives. The shop thinks they are great, me not so much.
 
Being near a military base is helpful.

The only problem is, most pawn shops are using that big river site or fleabay for knife pricing. I've even had the man pull up and quote me what they were going for when asked what he'd take for something. The good ole days of finding someone who doesn't know what they've got are all but gone but not entirely impossible given you put in the time. Stupid interwebz.
 
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