To be in the business of buying and selling, one must be nimble. Head on a swivel, a pawn shop owner hunts for value in the items that others gloss over.
But no matter how good you are at crunching the numbers, a stolen military weapon is simply off the table.
The pawn shop owners and employees of Reddit are full of wild examples of stolen items coming through the front door.
Some of these stories end with a shopkeeper surprised to receive a call from the cops. In this case, the item was so strange that assessing its legality was the least of concerns.
But the far more popular experience is turning down an item so obviously stolen that the seller is clearly a loose cannon, and therefore needs to be chucked form the store as soon as possible.
Manas_Das24 asked, "Pawn shop owners, what was the most illegal thing a customer had brought to your shop?"
Jig's Up
"Worked at a gun shop and a shady looking guy brought in a few pairs of night vision googles, like high end military grade PVS-14 night vision googles."
"Ask him why he was selling them. 'Oh, I just don't need them anymore.' Cool man, do you mind if I call the company real quick and run the numbers? Sometimes this stuff is stolen property."
"And as soon as I said that he jumped across the counter, grabbed the googles and bolted for the door."
Re-Gifted Laptops
"A guy brought in a stack of like 15 laptops that all said property of city Public School right on the top of each one."
"He then threatened to shoot me when I told him to get out." -- 3leftturn
"Not an owner, but I got a call from a pawn shop saying that one of my at-home employees tried to sell her work computer."
"It has my company's logo and contact info right on it plain as day. How stupid can some people be?" -- VeeKam
The Least Secure Security Deposit
"A man brought in a bag of cocaine and asked if I would buy it then resell it back to him in a couple of days." -- Moist_mop
"Mind if I call in a buddy? He's an expert in cocaine." -- RickGrimesLol
"That guy was so high he got the formula backward. You're supposed to get the pawn money to buy the drugs, not pawn the drugs to get the money." -- ProfessorZhirinovsky
Local Militia Would've Paid a Pretty Penny for it
"A guy literally brought in an RPG."
"He was doing yard work for this old lady whose husband had passed. She gave it to him for doing some yard work not realizing it was live and active."
"The guy was career military and after the bomb squad came and disabled it, they went to her house and found a trove of similarly very illegal military-grade weapons."
-- bisk0ot
Too Good to be True
"We had a couple come in to pawn their backhoe over the weekend (happens a lot) and brought their bill of sale. They wanted a simple $1k loan which wasn't bad considering how much it was worth."
"No more than 30 minutes later cops are there with the owner. Apparently they worked for him and went and pawned all of his industrial equipment."
-- SupriseRape
But I Don't Want It Anymore!
"A friend of mine owns a pawn shop, and one day a dude walks in with a cardboard box filled to the top with his own shit. He claims that it's magic and my friend cuts him off right there and kicks him out."
"As he is walking out he drops the box on accident, gets all of his shit on the floor, sees the mess he's made, stares at the horrid pile of shit for a couple of seconds, and runs out of the shop."
"My friend never got his name, and never saw him again. The smell would proceed to linger in the shop for a good month after it was cleaned up."
-- CanadaMan01
Cultural Differences
"Literally had a customer come in and say, 'Hi, I've just stolen this phone off my sister, how much will you give me for it?' "
"Had another customer bring in a gun and a crossbow, that was weird (I'm in the UK, this is not a normal thing)." -- ashcymru84
"This might sound ridiculous, but can you guys not just buy a gun at a supermarket?" -- dandydiehl
"911 What is your Return Policy?"
"Buddy of mine worked at a pawn shop for a few years, they had a guy try to sell them a police walkie talkie, like straight stolen from a car but with the battery taken out."
"They told him to get f*cked and called the cops. I believe they picked the guy up a few hours later."
-- _leetster
Gold is Gold
"I don't know if it's necessarily illegal but one time I guy brought me a handful of human teeth with bloody roots and gold filings. He wanted me to extract the gold. I said no thanks bro." -- sickofmasshysteria
"Definitely not his teeth." -- Ballsforbrains
Think of the Power
"A locksmith machine, the one that makes key copies. We didn't know it was illegal until we try to put it out for sale." -- carlosdekansas
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