Pawn Shop Shoping

Pawn shops are like ebay - not for the inexperienced but capable of real reward for the one who knows what he sees.

I window shop in pawn shops occasionally.
I have never seen any coins that have interested me, ever.

Yeah, your nick has never been more accurate.

The good/bad thing about pawn shops is you can assume they won't know what they have. They may think they know, which is bad, but you might just find a real bargain.

My lcs is a Pawn shop. The employees there are quite knowledgable in coins, and they have fair prices. A lot of my type set is from them.

I have around 6 coin shops that I live within 15 minutes of... 2 of which are the only ones I go to. I have one that I make sales to, the other one I go to to make purchase's because he doesn't charge me sales tax and he charges me really good prices on things. One of the others is VERY well known to have an old couple working there who own it, and act like they hate you for walking through their doors, like everyone in this the city I live in knows the name of the shop, and the owners names, they go in once and never come back, the guy is so old, and so set, he doesn't even need to sell. Another shop that just changed hands recently, hit me kind of weird, they were selling one of the 8oz american eagle coin things, and so I asked about it and what it weight, since it says something like 1/2 lb so I asked if it was troy or a pound? So the guy said he wasn't sure, he took it out of the capsule and through it on his scale, it weighed 8.8 ounces. That right there struck me as weird, and there were the owner in there who was sitting there, while his older buddy was the one helping me (I'm 33, these guys are in their mid 50's) and another 2 guys a tad older than me, he said the price, hmmm I guess it'd be 8.8 ounces times whatever it was they were quoting me. These things are not made by the mint and are generics from my knowledge, needless to say I definitely passed. So I went to 1 of the 2 coin shops I trust and told them about this coin, he said did it look like this? He broke out one from behind the counter and I said yup, it had a serial number on it and everything, it was a fake. he had cut in to it after doing an acid test on it and discovered it was something like brass or bronze or something. So I went back to the other shop and told them about the other coin and asked them, that with such a weird wweight, have they tested it, they basically changed the subject, I said ok and just eventually left.

Anyways, ALWAYS do your research before you make a buy at a LCS that you may think is questionable, build relationships with these guys... I give the guy that doesn't charge me sales tax wheat pennies that I ask from clerks (of course I check them first to make sure they're normal ones) but I'll have a few and when I walk in toss them his way, I've given him a couple Buffalo nickels and stuff too... it's something I might make a buck if I sold it, but my relationship of knowing the guy for going on now 3 years is way more valueable than a buck. I walked in today to buy some generics, he included 2 maple leaf's and a Moose along with 7 other various generics like st. guadians and OPM and some other stuff... So build your relationships with these guys, they have a ton of experience and like to help people if you're nice and treat them with respect. These guys have a stressful job, I wouldn't wanna deal with it.

None of the several pawn shops here sell coins, period.

Pawn Shops are like a "Box of chocolate" to para-phrase Forrest Gump, You never know what you're gonna get!