Believe it or not, pawn shops will not buy things from minors.
So when it comes to buying and selling in pawn shops there are some laws that govern the transactions that pawn shops can conduct.
For instance, one of the large problems that you will often see is floating out there is whether or not pawn shops can buy things from minors.
This topic most often comes up with parents or family that are concerned that their child, grand child or nephew may have stolen something from their home and taken it to a local pawn shop.
In this scenario, you almost always expect the worst because after all, pawn shops are where bad guys go, right? Wrong.
The fact of the matter is that pawn shops want to do anything they can to keep stolen merchandise out of their shops by any means necessary.
Knowing that, most minors aren’t going to have the kind of valuable merchandise that pawn shops typically take in – and if they do, it’s normally either their parents or something that their parents bought for them.
Pawn shops know this, they are very much aware of these scenarios and because of that they don’t even want to deal with minors to begin with. But further more, there is another reason they don’t.
While you might think that pawn shops will buy just about anything from anybody, as it turns out pawn shops will not buy things from minor in most cases. There are a variety of reasons for that but in most cases, it’s actually not legal for minors to enter into contracts and when someone sells things to a pawn shop – they have to sign a contract.
More Often Than Not Pawn Shops Can’t Legally Buy From Minors
In most states, it’s illegal for pawn shops to buy from minors because that requires the minor to sign a legal contract of sale to the pawn shop.
This contact states that the merchandise being sold is legally owned by the person selling it and that they are responsible for the transaction.
However, legally speaking, minors can not enter into contracts without their guardian getting involved.
Therefore, minors are inherently unable to sell items in pawn shops unless the state law in that area makes some kind of exception where either a minor can enter into a contract or the pawn shop does not need to have a sale contract to conduct the transaction.
However There Is Still Another Concern
Okay, so we’ve covered that pawn shops can’t buy from minors but does that mean that there is no way possible for a minor to sell to a pawn shop? Unfortunately not.
Kids, being kids, are going to have friends and some of their friends are going to be older than they are. Because of that, they may have a friend, or a friend of a friend that is 18 years old or older.
Kids, being creative and crafty will often have these friends of theirs try to sell the items for them. Unfortunately, sometimes it works.
But even with that in mind, if the item being sold is abnormally valuable than you may find that the pawn shop still refuses the transaction, even though the person selling it is of the legally required age.
Pawnbrokers aren’t dummies. They know that if a 18 year old kid walks in with a $30,000 that something is seriously wrong. In these cases, they may try to identify the potential seller and item and contact their local law enforcement agencies.
In other circumstances, if they can buy the item inexpensively enough, they may go ahead and buy them just to get the item off the street (where it could be sold to some drug dealer or someone where you will have no chance of getting it back) and then call the police to report the transaction immediately as being very suspicious.
