The above title may seem like a daytime TV advert for a dodgy investment scheme, but you’d only be half right with that one. It’s not on Television, it’s on a street near you. The BBC reports that in the last two years, pawnbrokers are having a field day and stepping into the position of where banks should be. Government ministers and economists wagging their collective fingers at banks to lend to people more, just isn’t delivering the goods. Pawnbrokers are. When people want fast cash (averaging 70% of the value of the item they’ve brought in), they are turning to the once-frowned-upon urban pawnbroker. What’s more, the Beeb reports that London’s pawn shops are dealing in high quality merchandise, not fake Thai Rolex’s and bad forgeries, “We’ve had big Andy Warhol pieces and cases of fine wine. Anything really that has got a high value,” says Ian Welsh of New Bond Street and Mays and Borro, “The world’s first online pawnbroker” concurs, “We’ve had City types drive up their Ferarris, or bring in paintings, antiques, music memorabilia, signed first edition books, stamps etc,” he says.
First, everyone is scampering to buy gold bullion and now their sidestepping Lloyd’s for a loan at the pawnshop. The banks are having a tough time on the high street (there own fault!). Before you start looking around your flat at what you can flog, be warned, as the article states, that the annual interest rate , if you’re intending to get your Grandfather’s gold watch back after a year, is up to 70%. But, as Borro founder Paul Aitken points out, that’s not really the point. Everyone brings in their Ming vases for a short-term injection of cash, and most, he says, find a way to get the item back within a few months.
