A Beverly Hills pawnshop has a rare, $70,000 1989 white Porsche Speedster convertible in the lobby, along with an antique red Jaguar and a gold-and chrome-plated Harley-Davidson.
A Texas-based chain of more than 250 pawnshops, traded on the New York Stock Exchange, is going for the young-lawyer look-Cash America plans to dress its brokers in uniforms of white or blue oxford button-down shirts with royal blue ties and pants.
An Oakland lawyer deals in upscale boats and cars at his waterfront Float-a-Loan pawn office-everything from a black and chrome hot-rod boat for $9,500 to a red 1986 Ferrari.
“We prefer to do big loans,” says pawnbroker Lee Cooper.
Forget grim-faced Rod Steiger in the movie “The Pawnbroker.” Forget the old image of a huckster hocking hot guns and gold watches and getting rich off the misfortunes of others.
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Hello, Mr. Clean. The pawn business is undergoing a major image-lift. How substantial a lift depends on whom you talk to.
Many pawnshops are spiffing up their interiors, popping up in shopping centers and suburbs from Los Altos to the San Fernando Valley. They call themselves “loan marts,” and “collateral lenders,” anything to lose the pawn connotation.
Customers range from movie stars to newly unemployed aerospace engineers to two-income families trying to make mortgage payments.
One professional hocked her Ford van to raise money for a down payment on a house because she didn’t want to go through her bank for financing. Another woman pawned her Maserati after she gambled away $2 million.
James Slaughter, father of five, recently lost his job as a security guard in San Francisco, so he pawned his kids’ Nintendo game.
Even in pawnshops on grimy downtown streets, change, and more than just spare change, is in the air.
“What’s happening now, in a big way, is that pawnshops are coming out of the gutter,” says Neil Bronstein, a hairdresser-turned-pawnbroker at Pacific Loan & Jewelry Co. on Sixth Street in San Francisco.
Bronstein can sell you a Giorgio Sant’Angelo mink coat for $950 or a 1961 jumbo acoustic Gibson guitar, the kind Elvis played, for $4,000-and you can pay with your ATM card.
“At one point, when you used to mention pawnshops, the connotation was sleazy,” says Bronstein.
“Now, you still get the bums and the drug addicts, but you are getting a much wider range of clients. It’s more upscale.”
The scale goes all the way up to Collateral Lenders of Beverly Hills, the pawnshop with the Porsche in the lobby. Customers who prefer not to be seen in the act of pawning may enter by the back entrance and do business in an appointment-only VIP room.
The especially squeamish may haggle in the privacy of their limousines.
“Quite a few celebrities, they don’t even want to come out of their cars,” says Tal Shmargal, a former electronics engineer who is now general manager of the company, which operates three pawnshops.
“I have a guy that comes in every once in a while to borrow $15,000 to $20,000-just to throw a party. Of course, I can’t name names.”
The number of places to buy all this merchandise is growing-pawnshops in the United States doubled in number in the last six years to at least 10,000.