Pawn Shop History
Pawn shops were among
the earliest forms of commerce. The first pawn brokers emerged more than 3,000
years ago. (To put this into perspective, the first stamped coins were minted
around 650-600 B.C.) These first transactions were made by Buddhist monasteries
who used donations to lend money to the public at a modest interest rate.
Pawn
shops became popular as economic institutions in ancient Greece and Italy. The
growth of the industry was briefly throttled in Europe by the Catholic Church's
restrictions on charging interest. As these restrictions were lifted, pawn shops
began to appear across Europe.
The Medici
family, a large and powerful Italian dynasty, rose to power in part due to their
pawnbroking activity. The English Lombards similarly became a powerful banking
family famous for allowing King Edward III finance a war with France by using
his jewelry as collateral for large loans. Queen Isabella is thought to have paid
for Christopher Columbus's trips to the New World by pawning her crown jewels.
Although
pawn shops have always been in the United States, their presence has greatly increased
in the last hundred years. The Great Depression was responsible for much of this
growth as at times, pawn shops were some of the few institutions lending money.
Today, pawn shops exist in most countries
in the world and have recently received an increase in pop culture presence due
to two new reality television shows. A History Channel reality shows shows the
inner workings of an upscale Las Vegas pawn shop while new truTV series shows
the grittier side of a pawn shop in Detroit.
