How I Ripped Off the Pawn Shop
On a
whim, I stopped by the
pawn shop in my neighborhood on the way home from work. There was a sign on the door, something like "
FIREARMS ARE NOT ALLOWED" But what if I want to pawn my gun? I guess the
Value Pawn chain doesn’t take guns, but they do take bows if you are into
low tech killing.
Inside I was greeted with an overly friendly
salesperson. You know the type – he’ll to sell you everything in the place. He’d try to sell a ham in a
synagogue. I dodged his eager
salesmanship with the usual excuses. Sorry, but I wasn’t interested in an eighty dollar
stereo without knobs. I was there to check out the
used CDs.
Since they specialize in ripping people off by underpaying them for
jewelry and
electronics and overcharging them on
interest, not selling records, the
CDs are incredibly cheap. Last time I was there, I walked out with a very large stack for just $18. Today I found the 2 CD set
The Jimi Hendrix Experience BBC Sessions for only
six bucks! It was in perfect condition: there wasn’t even a scratch on the
jewel case, and the consumer response postcard was still inside. Unbelievable. Were they
smoking crack when they priced this? Even the salespeople seemed surprised by the deal.
The woman who rung up my purchase was quite friendly, not to mention cute. Why couldn’t she have been the overly eager salesperson? Unfortunately, short of checking for new CDs everyday or pawning
everything I own, I don’t really have a lot of excuses for stopping by frequently. Maybe I’ll buy that knobless stereo…