Inside the World of Pawn Shops
17 April 2011
A pawn shop window in Northern Virginia
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I’m Shirley Griffith.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: And I'm Christopher Cruise. This week on our program we tell you about pawn shops in the United States.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Pawn shops are businesses where people bring their possessions to get a small, short-term loan or to sell. The United States has about twelve thousand of them. Pawn shops may be large or small, clean or dirty, but they are all full of stories about people's lives.
This may explain the popularity of reality programs like "Pawn Stars" on the History Channel.
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It features a family of pawnbrokers in Las Vegas, Nevada. "Hard Core Pawn" on TruTV features a pawnbroker and his grown son and daughter in a large pawn shop in Detroit, Michigan.
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These shows are among the most-watched programs on the two cable channels. But some pawnbrokers consider them misleading.
Most of the time the programs show people who want to sell their items. Pawnbrokers say very few customers want to do that. They just need a small loan for a short time.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: People who want "fast cash" can get a loan based on the resale value of their item. This is what it means to pawn something. The pawnbroker will sell the item if the loan is not repaid on time.
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