The Terrors of Pawning

Mrs. Callands- I do not believe that pawn shops are the downfall of America. I believe that the lack of common human decency is the downfall of America, in my humble opinion. Most people who are having to pawn things to survive are those who have no other recourse. Most do not qualify for public aid because they make too much money and yet do not make enough to meet their day to day expenses. They are simply good people doing what they need to do in order to survive. So where are those who are well off during their fellow man's crisis? Oh I've heard things such as "Ask a church", "Don't they have aid for that", and a host of other excuses. The bottom line is most people don't know their neighbors, won't help their neighbors, and simply don't care if they believe their neighbor's problems do not effect their way of life. The sad reality is that we live in a symbiotic relationship with those around us. Sooner or later their problems will become our problems. It is best to help them before that occurs. In terms of pawn shops, I've used them quite a few times. Most of the time it has simply been to get rid of items I could not sell at the yard sale. We recently sold off old movies that we couldn't sell. There was just not a huge call. Pawn shops are not really making a lot of money off the day to day items. The pawnshop near us is making a dollar off the movies they buy. That's not really that much to be honest. Especially if you take into account they have to pay for their building, expenses, and employees. Running any business is not an inexpensive endeavor. Even on a few display swords we sold them because it is against Craigslist TOS to sell such items the pawnshop was only selling them for an extra five dollars. We had been asking locally $150 per sword and could not get it. We had no place to store them, they were simply display swords (non use), so we took our loss and pawned them off. The way we looked at it is that we had an excess of something that we couldn't sell at full cost, so somewhere in our town there is some kid or young man/girl getting a great deal on some quality display swords. We may have just made someone very happy! I think it is all on how one views their objects as well. It is not that some things I own are not sentimental, but I've been working very hard over the last several years to break unhealthy attachments. You would think I would have learned by now but it has taken a great deal of ending unhealthy relationships to let me view my objects differently. Here is my brief time-line. Married for x years to a jerk, ended that and moved out with just my kids. Lost everything. Rebuilt my "stuff" as I was misled to believe one must have things to be. The apartment above mine caught fire, lost everything. Rebuilt again and a year later lost everything when I moved to take a teaching post in another state. When I moved to marry my second husband I started to develop a new attitude. I broke with old relationships whom kept insisting that one must have things to be. I began to break my unhealthy attachment to things and view them as things. I learned not to panic if something broke, became lost, or other. They were things. I have people in my life who make me very happy, and above that I'm simply happy being me. That is the real adventure in life. Not the things we accumulate along the journey. Namaste-Anora

Hi mrscallands22. Pawn shops are not the downfall of only american society, any society for that matter has to deal with it. I have pawned one of my jewel twice and yes, it was hard paying the interest as well as the principal amount. But I did manage to save and get them back because even though they were mine, they were bought by my parents and given to me as a wedding gift and hence I think it rightfully belongs to my daughter and I am just the keeper of those jewels for the time being. And hopefully she would pass them on to her children. My father has always taught us sisters that it is never a good thing to pawn your jewellery or anyhing else. And I do strongly believe in that. Because once you get into the habit of pawning or selling things for money, saving and buying them again is next to impossible resulting in double or triple losses for you. Because this was ingrained in me from my childhood, I never ever would pawn my jewellery or anything else again. Would rather save money when I get in abundance and not spend it so that it would come in handy when I go through hard times. Hope you get out of your present situation without having to pawn or sell your computer. Wish you all the best.

i actually have never pawned anything but was wondering if you have ever seen pawn stars on tlc? i am sorry you are in the predicament you are in. if you pawn your computer, you could travel to the library to use their computers.

Yes, I must say pawnshops are a joke. I just bought a laptop computer recently from one. Once I put my money down on the laptop my money was no longer mine's it belongs to ths pawnshop. All I was entitled to was a credit if I changed my mind or could not pay off the the balance. I to once pawn off a set of rings and was never able to get them out. Pawnshop are a rip off they fleece the poor especially with those dreaded pay day loans.

Yes, it is very sad that so many people have fallen into such financial despair from the recession that they are forced to sell their valuables just to stay afloat. If you do decide to pawn your computer, make sure that you get out of pawn before the time expires or you basically give to them for nothing. My prayers are with you!

I pawned my late father's watch that was left to me after his passing. It hurt me terribly to do this, I didn't get it back, and I wished I had never done what I did. Many years later, my husband pawned an old rifle (passed down to him by his grandfather) that did bring us money to pay a bill with, but I swore that we would never do this again, and we haven't. But the feeling was just awful, I felt crushed.

Several years ago, I sold all of my movies and games to a pawn shop, just so I could get diapers for my son. It saddened me at the time. I didn't even bother to pawn them because I knew I would never be able to buy them back, so I sold them outright. At that particular time, I thought that those things were really important, if not to me, than to my kids. In the long-run, I realized that they were only material objects and we really didn't need them that much. The thing that made me upset the most was seeing the things that I had worked hard to buy having to be sold for less than half of what I paid for them. After that, I never did bother going to a pawn shop to sell things again, nor to pawn them either. I decided that if I needed the money that badly again, I would sell my things to someon eon the street and make more, rather than sell them at a pawn shop. It is sad that so many people rely on these places, and many times, as with you, something happens and they are not able to buy their things back. I think that is the way these businesses are set up. I know here, where I live, they give you 30 to 60 days to buy your things back before they just keep it. My sister-in-law lost a camera that way, and the bad part about it was that her SD card was still in it and she didn't realize it until it was too late. So, not only did she end up losing the camera, she also lost all of her pictures.

I have never and will never pawn anything that is important to me. I believe that I worked hard to have the things that I have and if I needed money, I would rather sell it outright than to pawn it for less money. That said, I also know that if there is something that you are looking for to buy, a pawn shop is one of the first places that I would look to find something. I hate to take advantage of the problems of others, but that isn't always the reason that you find things at pawn shops.

If people are that desperate, they might go to pawn shop as their final resort. If I am not that desperate, I won't need to visit those pawn shops though. They will charge you ultra high interest rate, and it still better than those payday loan though. No, I never pawn anything to the pawn shop, hopefully you will get rid of that situation.

Hi mrscallands, I never really knew how exactly the pawn shop works, but now I know after reading your post, and it doesn't sound very good to me. There are many times that I really needed money, and yes I need an extra money right now, but that is why I'm working so hard online. I'm very far away from all of my love one and the only way I can contact them is by skype. I can use my phone but I can't afford to buy credit for it all the time. I use skype to skype call because it is completely free, so let say if I pawn my laptop for money then I won't be able to be in contact with family and because I would need to pay everytime if I go to public computer. I don't think my phone would worth much because it is only a basic phone and sometime it is not working properly. Then I have my 80GB ipod, but I can never give that away or give it to the pawn shop because it is a christmas gift from my fiance last year. I have nothing else important other than that i could think of pawning. I hope you will think again before pawning your computer because maybe you will regret it just like the rings of yours. Good luck and have a nice day!

mrscallands hi... Yes it's sad to see that happening but in my country our pawn shops we don't see much people visiting these outlets so in the end they end up shutting down... I have never had to pawn anything but last month my husband sold a dvd player we hardly used when we needed money for food... He sold it to a friend but we didn't get anything near the price of what a dvd player cost & that player could also be used for a karaoke player... I was sad when we got rid of it, I try harder now to save when we have extra money so that way when we need the money for something important we have it on hand.. I don't really like pawn shops, I always get this bad feeling in the inside of my tummy that these items being sold here are because the owners can't afford to pay back the loan they borrowed, whats worse the pawn shops sell these items for more higher prices than what the owners borrowed for each item.. I hope you can find another solution instead of pawning your computer because you need it for school, anyway you can borrow family & make a promise to pay them back later... Everything will get better in the future, have a great day mylot friend...

Some people go to pawn shop and pledge their things if they need money urgently. But this kind of persons indirectly involved in to unwanted troubles in their life. We must try our maximum to avoid pledging our things in the pawn shop, even though we are in financial problems. We must find other sources to get money than pledging the things to the pawn brokers. Most of the pawn brokers will give the low rate for our things like jewels, ornaments, property and others and collect a great interest amount from us, if we don't have the ability to pay the interest properly, then they will put our things to the auction. This kind of brokers never give time to us to get back our things, most of the persons are forced to forget about the things which they are pledged to the pawn brokers due to the situation. Pawning our things and getting money from it may be a temporary solution to solve our money problem, but it will create another new problem in our life and it is really hard to get back our favorite things if we pledged it, we are in need to spend more money for it. In fact the money we get from the pawn brokers for our thing is very much lower than the interest amount, if we take time to get back our things. The person once go to the pawn broker and pledge their things will surely make an oath to avoid such thing in the future due to their bitter experience. Better to avoid pawning your things to solve your money issues. Various ways are available to solve our financial problems which is better than pawning our things, so select one among them and avoid panning the things to avoid unwanted headaches in your life.