How do pawn shops work?
Basically pawn shops prey on the poor and those who, for whatever reason, are unable to get credit by conventional means. You take something valuable to them, they value it and give you a proportion of the value in cash as a secured loan. When you want it back you pay more – it works out at a ridiculously high rate of interest and, if you don’t pay it back within a fairly short space of time, you lose the item altogether. There are some very unscrupulous shops in England called Cash Converters. They are to be avoided like the plague, either as a borrower or a shopper. As a borrower you are going to get ripped off, and as a buyer you are going to get what was the property of some poor soul who fell on hard times.
