Press: Pawn Paper

To the vast specialty press of the U. S. is now added an instructive new monthly called The Pawnbrokers’ Journal. Publisher is one David Silver, a thin-thatched, spectacled, onetime jeweler who launched his venture on the promising estimate that there are some 13,000 pawnshops in the land, until now lacking in a literature of their own.

Vol. 1 No. 1 was a small magazine about Reader’s Digest size. The Pawnbrokers’ Journal got directly to business with the publisher’s manifesto which promised that the magazine was to be “a free press for imparting news affecting the industry,” and asserted that “proper publicity” would “create a more favorable public opinion of the pawnbrokers’ business.” Pages of news followed about pawnbrokers’ ordinances in various cities, including Berlin, where The Pawnbrokers’ Journal correspondent wrote: “Pawn shops, the poor man’s banks, are soon to feel the Nazi big stick. . . . Their interest rates, often running as high as 30%, are to be trimmed to a flat 6% annual rate. …” Better news came from Los Angeles, where a correspondent reported that the State Supreme Court of California had ruled that “there is nothing in the State statutes prohibiting pawnbrokers and personal property brokers from charging any rate of interest they please.” Big fiction feature of The Pawnbrokers’ Journal was “A Fair Exchange” by Harry Irving Shumway. This story opens with Pawnbroker Moe Epstein appraising a diamond for his friend Marcus. Says Moe: “A full quarter of a carat but the dirtiest diamond I ever see. Nine dollars is the very positive limit.” Marcus offers to trade the diamond for a tray of fountain pens, then balks because the pens appear to be ”too yellow.” Moe says, “So are canary birds, but who’s afraid of canary birds? Well?” The trade completed, Marcus remarks that the weather is ”darker than one of these here epileptic days,” drifts on to trade the fountain pens to his friend Meyer Cohen. Offered a camera, Marcus declaims: “I am full of the devil today.

Knowing nothing at all about moving picture cameras, still I accept your offer.” Surprise ending of “A Fair Exchange” is that after a hard day’s finagling, Marcus’ final trade brings him a pawn ticket which proves to be for the very same stone he started out with.

Not fictional are the practices loan office operators are warned against in the article entitled “Unending Vigilance—the Price of Pawnbrokers’ Success.” Biggest current menace, according to this article, is the “teeth substitution gag,” by which swindlers trick unwary pawnbrokers into accepting brass-coated false teeth for gold.

Disillusioning to customers but useful for them to know is that “a pawnbroker never lends money on the basis of what the customer paid for the article. If it’s jewelry, we lend only on the actual value of the gold or silver in it.”