A lot of people have been into pawn shops to shop but even more have been in them to make a loan. If you’ve made a loan with a pawn shop before, you may be asking yourself, “How long until a pawn shop can sell my stuff?”
So here we are with a question that a lot of people who are unfamiliar with pawn shops, or don’t work with them on a regular basis will ask and for good reason.
What they want to know is this – just how long will it be until a pawn shop can turn around and sell the items that they take in, either on a loan or that they have purchased directly.
Unfortunately, the answer isn’t as easy as you might imagine.
You see, pawn shops are regulated on federal, state and local levels, each with their own rules and laws for what pawn shops do, how much they charge and how long they have to hold onto the items that come into their stores.
Because of that, not all things are always going to be the same from pawn shop to pawn shop and there is no way I can give you one answer that would apply to all pawn shop across the country.
With this in mind, I can give you some general guidelines on how long you may have before a pawn shop turns around and sells your items so that you have a starting point. Additionally, I will tell you exactly how you can find out just how long pawn shops in your area hold onto items before they sell them.
If you have a loan with a pawn shop and haven’t paid in awhile, you might be wondering, “When can a pawn shop sell my stuff?” Well, the answer depends…
General Rules For How Long Pawn Shops Hold Onto Items
As a general rule, pawn shops will hold onto items for no less than 30 days when they make a loan on them in the worse case scenario.
Often times, pawn shops are required to hold onto items they make loans on for 2 to 4 months and in rare cases, even longer.
What this means is that if you make a loan on something at a pawn shop, you are going to have at least 30 days to come back and get it – but in most cases, you will have several months at minimum.
Further more, you can often extend the length of time that you have to come back and get your items by paying the interest on them. This process is often known as ‘Renewing or Rewriting’ the loan.
Often times, what occurs that that when your renew a loan, you are going to get additionally time in direct proportion to the amount of time you pay for.
So, if you are given 90 days in your state and you pay 60 days worth of back due interest charges, you will be given an additional 60 days to come in and get your items (or 150 days total.)
Often times you can do this as often as you need to in order to make sure that you are able to get your items back that your originally pawned.
But What About When They Buy Items
When a pawn shop just buys items outright and doesn’t make a loan against them, they are also going to be regulated by the laws in their area as to how long they have to hold onto those items before they turn around a resell them.
In some cases, there may be no holding period at all, although often times it will be at least a week if not longer.
The reason for this is because if something stolen is brought into the pawn shop, it gives law enforcement time to react to the items and investigate them.
This holding period is often something that pawnbrokers have worked to have put into their state laws as an attempt to discourage people from bringing in stolen materials because they will know that police departments will be able to catch them easily.
How To Find Out How Long You Have
If you want to find out how long pawn shops in your area hold onto items before they turn around and sell them, the best way to do that is to call the pawn shops that you are thinking about using and simply ask.
They will be happy to answer this question for you, and trust me, they answer it 20 times a day if not more already.
When you call, be sure to call the shops that you intend on using however as you have to keep in mind that pawn shop holding period can differ by city-to-city in some cases and if you call a pawn shop outside of the area that you are actually going to be making the loan in, the holding period that the pawn shop is obligated to abide by may be different than the one on the loan you make.
