Pawnbroker
individual or business that offers loans to people, with items of personal property used as collateral
A pawnbroker is an individual who offers secured loans to people by taking items of personal property as collateral. A pawnbrokering entity is called a pawnshop or pawnbrokerage. While many items can be pawned, pawnshops typically accept jewelry, musical instruments, coins, gold, silver and firearms. Home-audio equipment, computers, video-game systems, televisions, cameras, and power tools became pawnable as the world entered the Information Age. The items pawned to the broker or shop are themselves called pledges, pawns, or simply the collateral.
If an item is pawned for a loan (colloquially "hocked" or "popped" or "up the spout"),
within a certain contractual period of time the pawner may take it back in exchange for the amount of the loan plus some agreed-upon amount for interest. In the United States the amount of time and the rate of interest are governed by law and by state commerce-department policies. Pawnbrokers have the same license as a bank, which is highly regulated. If the loan is not paid (or extended, if applicable) within the time period, the pawnbroker will offer the pawned item for sale to other customers. Unlike other lenders, the pawnbroker does not report the defaulted loan on the customer's credit-report, since the pawnbroker has physical possession of the item and may recoup the loan value through outright sale of the item.
The public source identifies “Pawnbroker” as individual or business that offers loans to people, with items of personal property used as collateral. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Pawnbroker, individual and business.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Pawnbroker”, the useful work is to connect “individual or business that offers loans to people, with items of personal property used as collateral” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q176637. The Library of Congress control number is sh85098885. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pawnbroker” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.