Bushonomics: Hard times are good times at the pawnshop

Quick cash a lure when it ‘doesn’t matter what your credit is like’

People wait to turn in valuables for cash at ‘EZ Pawn’ in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Pawn shops across the country are doing a brisk business as a combination of an economic slowdown and higher metal prices are driving people to turn in their jewelry for cash.

A sign of the US Economic time’s, for Americans in need?

15 October 2008
By Alex Johnson

At People’s Pawn in Springfield, Mass., the collection of DVD players, televisions and other electronics just keeps getting bigger.

As many as 200 a people a day come in to “sell all their stuff so they can get gas money,” said Efren Rivera, who works at the shop. “Some people have to pay their mortgages.”

The story is similar at EZ Cash Pawn in West Palm Beach, Fla., where the shelves are so stacked with electronics, musical instruments, guns, fishing poles, scuba gear — you name it — that people are being turned away.