cartier love bracelet
 A
peek in the life of a female pawnbroker: Since the recession, it's one of the
most popular ways to borrow even a Cartier love bracelet
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Pawnbroker Emma Hayes-Pankhurst, 22, lives in Oxford. She's been working for
Borro since last May. She says:
 Open
mind: Emma Hayes-Pankhurst used to see pawnbrokers as grubby, backstreet
operations
Some of our clients are quite discreet, preferring not to divulge why they
want to pawn items and what they need the money for. Others tell me every
detail.
One of our regular customers is a property developer from Devon. She
approached us a few months ago with a bracelet and three diamond rings valued at
£10,000.
She borrowed £5,000 against them as a deposit on a finance deal to buy a £98,000
Aston Martin as a post-divorce treat to herself!
Another lady credits us with rebuilding her relationship with her father
after 40 years of not being in touch.
He lives in Spain and she recently pawned a few pieces of jewellery so that
she could afford international phone calls and also two plane tickets to take
her son to visit her dad.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century there were nearly as many
pawnbrokers in Britain as there were pubs, lending money on anything from bed
linen and cutlery to father's 'Sunday best' suit.
Today’s customers are more likely to pawn luxury watches, valuable artwork,
sports cars and diamond jewellery in a bid to pay the bills, the kids’ school
fees, or to fund luxury holidays, property-purchases or business deals.
Like a lot of people I used to think of pawnbrokers as being grubby, back
street operations.
But I’ve worked for Borro since May last year and it’s been such an eye
opener.
Since the recession kicked in pawnbroking has become one of the most popular
and cheapest ways to borrow money.
In the same way that eBay made it okay for middle class people to go online
and buy a second hand washing machine, pawnbroking has also become acceptable.
Although we’re an online pawnbroker, we have a shop where people can call
in if they want to as well.
On Monday a chap came in with two Patek Phillipe watches worth £50,000. I
spoke to the top London auction houses to confirm their current market value and
also to the manufacturer to check that they hadn’t been lost or stolen – the
watches each have serial numbers.
I also had a gentleman bring in two works by acclaimed artist Banksy against
which he borrowed £20,000. I sent them to our underground vault for
safekeeping. We also have a Henry Moore sculpture down there worth around £100,000.
We currently have some really high value pawned items in storage including
two Ferraris, a Porsche and a light aircraft.
We’re getting a lot of enquiries from people who want to pawn yachts for
the winter months when they won’t be using them. It means they get to release
some capital that they can pay back when they’re ready to set sail again in
the spring.
Customers contact us about an item they’d like to pawn, we value it, they
decide how much of that value they’d like to borrow and we lend the money to
them.
They then have six months to repay the loan and interest at between four and
six per cent. If they don’t repay - 10 per cent of customers don’t - the
item is sold at auction and any profits above the loan and interest forwarded to
them.
In the last six months we’ve seen the number of very wealthy clients soar
as even they are being affected by the recession.
One lady who buys and sells vintage luggage recently pawned a Cartier love
bangle and a Rolex watch for £5000 so she could afford to buy a set of Luis
Vuitton cases for a client at an auction in the south of France.
Like a lot of people her cash is tied up in her business and cashflow can be
an issue.
This week a well to do lady called me to pay off a loan of £80,000 she took
out in the autumn against a three-carat solitaire diamond ring.
She used the money for a deposit on a second home in France, telling me that
it had been her dream for years.
People are beginning to pawn various items to raise cash to fund the
Christmas shopping now too, hoping they’ll get bonuses from work that will
enable them to pay back the loans in the New Year.
Of course, we also get some ridiculous queries. One man wanted to know if he
could pawn his herd of sheep and cows for £10,000, another wanted to raise a
loan of £1000 against a set of solid gold false teeth. Needless to say we
politely declined.
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