I can’t say I’ve spent a lot of time in pawn shops. My friend runs one in Kansas that I’ve been to a few times to say hello but that’s really about it.
But I can imagine the things that people who work at or own pawn shops have to deal with on a daily basis.
Pawn shop workers and owners took to AskReddit to talk about the most illegal things that people brought into their businesses.
1. Get lost.
“Buddy of mine worked at a pawn shop for a few years, they had a guy try to sell them a police walkie talkie, like straight stolen from a car but with the battery taken out.
They told him to get fucked and called the cops. I believe they picked the guy up a few hours later.”
2. Let’s make a deal.
“Not an owner but an employee a man brought in a bag of cocaine and said if I would buy it then resell it back to him in a couple of days.”
3. Out the door.
“Worked at a gun shop and a shady looking guy brought in a few pairs of night vision googles, like high end military grade PVS-14 night vision googles.
Ask him why he was selling them “oh, I just don’t need them anymore.” Cool man, do you mind if I call the company real quick and run the numbers? Sometimes this stuff is stolen property.
And as soon as I said that he jumped across the counter, grabbed the googles and bolted for the door.”
4. What a creep
“A guy brought in a stack of like 15 laptops that all said property of city Public School right on the top of each one.
He then threatened to shoot me when I told him to leave, but he didn’t pull a gun on me. So I introduced him to my shotgun.
He left soon after without the laptops.”
5. Uhhhh, I don’t think we can buy that…
“A guy literally brought in an RPG. He was doing yard work for this old lady whose husband had passed. She gave it to him for doing some yard work not realizing it was live and active.
The guy was career military and after the bomb squad came and disabled it, they went to her house and found a trove of similarly very illegal military-grade weapons.”
6. Not very bright.
“Literally had a customer come in and say “hi, I’ve just stolen this phone off my sister, how much will you give me for it”
Also had a customer bring in 5 MacBooks at the same time, with a certain logo on it which gave me the impression they were stolen. Told him to leave them with me for testing and called the police.
Had another customer bring in a gun and a crossbow, that was weird (I’m in the UK, this is not a normal thing).”
7. How much for this?
“A friend of mine owns a pawn shop, and one day a dude walks in with a cardboard box filled to the top with his own shit. He claims that it’s magic and my friend cuts him off right there and kicks him out.
As he is walking out he drops the box on accident, gets all of his shit on the floor, sees the mess he’s made, stares at the horrid pile of shit for a couple of seconds, and runs out of the shop. My friend never got his name, and never saw him again.
The smell would proceed to linger in the shop for a good month after it was cleaned up.”
8. Not illegal, but…
“Friend of mine owns a shop. One day a woman walks in and asks if there was a female employee she could talk to. No problem it’s a family shop and his 18 year old daughter comes out to help her.
She asks to go out to her car where she opens the trunk. Whole thing is packed with sex toys, bondage shit, outfits and a big box of dildos.
Woman says her sister who recently passed away sold this stuff at parties and she had no idea what to do with it.”
9. That’s weird.
“I used to work at a pawn store. A shady guy brought in a tiger skull. I don’t remember if it was illegal or not. But the owner was yelling at him.
He kept coming back brining animal skin and skulls. I think the police drug busted his house. From what the owner told me.”
10. Gross!
“One time I guy brought me a handful of human teeth with bloody roots and gold filings.
He wanted me to extract the gold. I said no thanks, bro.”
11. Sawed-off.
“My dads friend works at a pawnshop in a shitty area and has had some crazy shit come in.
Mostly stolen guns and tools but the story he likes to tell is when a homeless guy tried to sell a sawed off shotgun covered in tape.
They called the cops and the guy tells them he found it in the park.”
12. Lots of crazy folks out there.
“The most illegal thing brought to my shop was an 8 ball of coke. He wasn’t selling it but wanted to buy a digital scale and brought it to test the scales we had.
Aside from that a chainsaw. Although not illegal itself, they used it to threaten me which was pretty illegal.
Pawnshops in a big metro get pretty crazy.”
13. Can’t do that over there.
“Someone tried to sell a rifle. In fucking England.
He claimed that it was an air pistol which is allowed if you keep it locked in a box and have a proper gun licence, but we could clearly tell that it was a rifle.
Idiot got arrested and landed his butt in prison.”
14. Odds and ends.
“Get odd stuff every now and then. The most recent thing was a hand crossbow, which are illegal in Canada. Also had various drug paraphernalia; used crack pipes, coke straws, prescription pills, etc.
Had a customer pawn a laptop once then come back in a little while later asking if they could get the weed out of their bag (weed was legal here at this time, but still funny).
Not illegal in Canada, but we’ve had Nazi gold come through too.”
Maybe it would be fun to work at a pawn shop for a while just to experience all this weirdness.
Now we want to hear from you! If you have any interesting pawn shop stories, please share them with us in the comments.
Maybe you were the owner? Maybe you were the customer? We want to hear all the stories!
