"People are cleaning out their houses of gold, silver, whatever, to get money just to fill their cars with gas," said Nat Leonard, 51, whose grandfather opened Society Hill in 1929. "People are pawning out like crazy." "I've got business owners coming in to pawn things just to make their payrolls," Leonard said, incredulous. "I've never seen that before."
"Upper-income people are in pawnshops nowadays, needing money right away to meet payments," said Bill Stull, chairman of the department of economics at Temple University's Fox School of Business and Management.
"We are in an economy in which many people are living right at the margins, even middle- and upper-income people. They have little savings, they've borrowed so much, their credit-card bills are high, and their house values are going down."
To meet higher gas, food and prescription drug bills, they are selling off grandmother's dishes and their own belongings. Some of the household purging has been extremely painful — families forced to part with heirlooms.
"This is not about downsizing. It's about needing gas money," said Nancy Baughman, founder of eBizAuctions, an online auction service she runs out of her garage in Raleigh, N.C. One former affluent customer is now unemployed and had to unload Hermes leather jackets and Versace jeans and silk shirts.
At Craigslist, which has become a kind of online flea market for the world, the number of for-sale listings has soared 70 percent since last July. In March, the number of listings more than doubled to almost 15 million from the year-ago period.
Damn! _________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
I'm just gonna find a cash machine.
Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 8:58 pm Post subject: Re: Pawnshop Society
I definitely see it around here. I was in a pawnshop recently, and I couldn't believe the number of people coming in to sell stuff.
Lots of people showed up with furniture, jewelery and all sorts of things in the short time that I was in there.
The people who were in there weren't the typical pawn shop denizens. They needed money not for drugs or booze, but to keep the car filled up and food on their tables. _________________ Deep in the mud and slime of things, even there, something sings.
Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 11:36 pm Post subject: Re: Pawnshop Society
This sort of thing isn't going to last very long before pawnbrokers are full up with stuff, and with a shrinking market, IMHO. _________________ Local fix-it guy..
Joined: Mar 07, 2007 Posts: 321 Location: Holland, United Kingdom (of the seven Netherlands)
Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 12:32 am Post subject: Re: Pawnshop Society
So much nice stuff that can be bought for hardly anything! I'm just going to wait for the dollar to drop a bit more and then I'm going on a buying frenzy on ebay/Craigslist.
Joined: Aug 03, 2007 Posts: 3147 Location: Boston Suburbs
Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 1:48 am Post subject: Re: Pawnshop Society
I think people who buy almost anything new are throwing money away. Unless you need the newest techno gadget, it makes sense to get stuff used. "Stuff" is incredibly cheap because so damn much of it is in circulation--more than anyone could ever need. It's amazing just how much perfectly good stuff just gets left in dumpsters, let alone put on ebay, thrift stores, or pawn shops. I've rescued an old TV, a desktop computer, and some lamps this way.
Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 7:33 am Post subject: Re: Pawnshop Society
Yeah, too much stuff gets thrown out!
It's funny, back when I was in college a favorite professor of mine
would talk about dumpster diving once in a while. Being around a
college kids toss out perfectly good lamps, binders, refrigerators.
Stuff thats got no business being retired yet, but there it is.
And when I lived in Ukraine, the open markets were truly open
markets. I was talking with a buddy who was selling tapes and
books in a fleamarket like section and frequently people would
come up to him and ask him what he would give for something.
Some things he turned down, but if he thought it would sell he
would give them money for it.
So the sellers in the market always were getting new inventory as
they sold stuff off. Also I thought that system was better then a
pawn shop since it employed a whole market of sellers instead of
just a guard at a door and a sales person. I think more systems like
this will crop up as our economy goes down the tubes. Most low
energy societies are fleamarket societies and I think that's what
we're seeing happening here.
By the way, Ukraine's electronics markets were too cool! A lot of
stuff that got broken would get scrapped into sorted boxes of the
good parts. I was almost tempted to come back with an suitcase of
diodes, motors, tools. The price of used electronics VS new, very big
difference!
Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 8:05 am Post subject: Re: Pawnshop Society
patience wrote:
This sort of thing isn't going to last very long before pawnbrokers are full up with stuff, and with a shrinking market, IMHO.
My thoughts exactly. Either the pawn brokers fill up with stuff, people run out of junk to sell, or the continued devaluation of the dollar causes people to get even less money for selling their junk at the same time it sends the price of gasoline ever higher. The end result will be the same no matter how it happens. People will be forced to do what they should be doing now - cutting back.
Not enough money to pay your employees? You're going to have to lay some of them off and scale back your business.
Not enough money to fill up the gas drink? Drive less, or carpool, etc. etc.
Instead of changing their behavior now and holding on to what little savings they have, everyone is still clinging to their current lifestyle in any way they can. Peak Oil may be seeing some exposure in the mainstream now, but it hasn't come anywhere close to sinking in yet to the average suburban zombie that their way of life is over. Which I guess is a good thing, because we'll see a huge panic when that does happen....
Reality is going to hit these people very very hard. _________________ In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule. – Nietzsche
Time makes more converts than reason. – Thomas Paine
History is a set of lies agreed upon. – Napoleon Bonaparte
Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 9:12 am Post subject: Re: Pawnshop Society
patience wrote:
This sort of thing isn't going to last very long before pawnbrokers are
full up with stuff, and with a shrinking market, IMHO.
Or large retail shops get squeezed out as people waste less.
As the market of used goods grows, retailers selling new goods will shrink.
Why buy a new cast iron frying pan if you can get a shined up used
one in an open market? That's what I saw happening in Ukraine.
And though markets don't come with healthcare, most retailers don't
provide much and with Ukraine everyone has healthcare anyway. But
even without benefits, an open market architecture seemed to employ
many more people then a traditional store model. Sure each seller
sells less, but if they aren't shipping inventory or paying dividends to
shareholders, maybe it evens out (it seemed to in Ukraine).
Joined: Apr 06, 2006 Posts: 2962 Location: 3 miles NW of Champoeg, Republic of Cascadia
Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 10:35 am Post subject: Re: Pawnshop Society
some_guy282 wrote:
People will be forced to do what they should be doing now - cutting back.
Don't you think they've tried?
Quote:
"These folks are making $10 an hour or whatever working at Home Depot and can't cut down on expenses any more," Sink said. "So they borrow against a gold chain or a new tool. The economy is really hurting them."
_________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
I'm just gonna find a cash machine.
Joined: May 13, 2005 Posts: 2619 Location: The Urban Village
Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 10:48 am Post subject: Re: Pawnshop Society
We have a really nice thrift/second hand shop a few blocks away. The people that run it are really nice too. It's really too nice since most stuff there isn't dirt cheap but its all good quality and interesting. Anything made out of wood, metal, ceramic or masonry or fabric is usually better quality the older it is.
I always think of a guy I knew and his wife. They both liked the idea of living in a close-in neighborhood where you can walk to things. But, when it came time to buy a house, they bought out in the newly-built exurbs. The reason? She didn't like the idea of living in someone elses 'used' house ! (all the houses here are older) . That was about 10 years ago, I wonder how they are doing?
Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 1:12 pm Post subject: Re: Pawnshop Society
TheDude wrote:
some_guy282 wrote:
People will be forced to do what they should be doing now - cutting back.
Don't you think they've tried?
Quote:
"These folks are making $10 an hour or whatever working at Home Depot and can't cut down on expenses any more," Sink said. "So they borrow against a gold chain or a new tool. The economy is really hurting them."
Maybe some have, but for the most part - no, I don't think they have.
It all comes down to what is perceived as "necessary." Americans in general have a very distorted sense of what it means to need something. They "need" to have an SUV. They "need" to drive that SUV everywhere they go, including the 100 mile round trip commute from the suburbs that they "need" to live in because they couldn't possibly live in the city....etc. etc.
I don't doubt that the people who are selling their belongings to make ends meet have tried "cutting back" so far. But I (and probably everyone on this site) have a very different idea of what it means to cut back on expenses than the average spoiled American suburbanite.
The business owner selling things to fund payroll is very telling. Clearly he thinks that the current situation is only temporary and that things will pick up again. Otherwise he'd do what he should be doing right now - getting rid of some employees, downscaling his business, or possibly shutting down completely.
I don't doubt that there are some people experiencing genuine hardship at the moment. But they are the minority. For the moment the vast majority of Americans are only experiencing a small taste of what is to come in the years ahead.
When suburbanites don't dare to drive a car unless it is full of passengers and have given up on their SUVs to ride bicycles in significant numbers, rather than sell their useless crap to buy gasoline, then I will think they're making a real effort to cut back. But as has been the consensus on this site for years I know they will only make those changes when circumstances compel them to - and not a moment before. _________________ In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule. – Nietzsche
Time makes more converts than reason. – Thomas Paine
History is a set of lies agreed upon. – Napoleon Bonaparte
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 12030 Location: zombie horde wonderland
Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 1:42 pm Post subject: Re: Pawnshop Society
There's not much of a market for junk out there. I've been listing some really nice junk, silverplate and glassware, on craigslist and nobody wants it. Darn cheap too. I'll probably end up giving it away just to get it out of the house. _________________ "...powerdown so soft and fluffy you'll think you're living in a pillow..." - jboogy
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