Ahh, the pawn industry, how it is that I love you. Today’s question is if pawn shops will buy boats or not.
Now on the surface, this seems like a simple enough question but the truth of the matter is that it is not as easy to answer as you really might imagine.
You see, pawn shops aren’t like Walmart or the Home Depot where there are thousands of stores and they all follow the same rules because they are run by the same owners.
Pawn shops are made up of thousands of individual business owners with their own ideas of what they would like to take in for a loan or buy outright and because of that, there is never one simple, straight forward answer to these types of questions unfortunately.
But with that in mind, I can at least attempt to give you a fairly decent idea of how to go about finding a pawn shop in your area that may buy your boat from you and some things that you should think about doing before you actually take your boat down to the pawn shop to have them look at it.
The truth of the matter is that there are some pawn shops that do buy boats as long as they are in good condition and they think that they might be able to find a buyer for it.
How To Find A Pawn Shop That Will Buy Your Boat
Okay, so let’s just cover some very basic ground work. The very first thing that you need to do when trying to sell your boat to a pawn shop is to find a pawn shop that will actually buy them to begin with.
Now, if you live in a major city like New York or Cleveland, you may find it a tad bit difficult to sell your boat to them because quite honestly, they will never no-place to store it and further more – selling it may not be the easiest thing for them to do either.
However, if you live in a more rural area where people tend to enjoy the outdoors and fishing a bit more, than you may find that you have a lot of luck when it comes to tracking down a pawn shop that will deal with this kind of item.
The first thing that you should do is go over to Google.com and search the term “Local Pawn Shops.” Google will return a list of pawn shops in your area along with their addresses and phone numbers.
You’re going to want to go down that list and call each pawn shop and simply ask them if they would consider buying a boat. It’s the easiest way to go about this process and will save you a ton of time compared to driving to each individual pawn shop and asking them in person.
Now, something to keep in mind is not to be intimidated by the idea of calling a pawn shop and asking them this sort of question. The truth of the matter is that they get questions like this all day long and are use to answering them, so they will welcome your question and probably respond very positively.
How To Pawn Your Boat
So now that you’ve found a pawn shop that will buy your boat or at least make you a loan against it, the next major thing that you will want to do is to put the odds in your favor – at least as much as possible – so that you get the most money you can for your boat.
The first thing that you really need to think about doing might sound basic but a lot of people fail to do it when they are taking something into the pawn shop. That is to just clean it off and clean it up as best as possible.
The batter your boat looks, the less work that the pawn shop will have to put into it to resell it, the more you would be likely to get out of them for a loan or if they are just buying from your outright.
This is a really basic step and I’m not entirely sure why people don’t think that pawn shops would care about this kind of thing but the fact of the matter is that they are looking for something that will be easier to turn around and sell quickly rather than something that they have to spend hours cleaning and repairing before they can sell it.
The second big thing with boats is to be sure that any damage is repaired before you take it in. If your boat is badly worn, beaten or has cracks and holes in it, you can all but forget it when it comes to most pawn shops.
Again, this comes down to the idea that pawn shops are looking for something that is relatively easy to turn around and sell quickly – not something that they are going to have to spend half their lives fixing just to make salable.
If you follow these two really easy steps you are going to put yourself ahead of the pack when it comes to trying to sell a boat to your local pawn shop. Good luck!
