Here's a potent, Southern-style mercantile combination. Loans! Guns! Musical Instruments!
It's hard to enumerate the things that are fantastic about this old Louisville sign. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to light up at night, since I also saw it during the evening.
S. E. Davis was found in 1936. Its Facebook page tells us this with a straight face: "We sell new and previously owned jewelry at a fraction of the cost of retail stores. We also have a music room with all the accessories you may need. We make loans on jewelry, musical instruments, electronics, firearms and most things of value."
Most things of value. Hilarious.
Perhaps you can take out a loan to buy a gun or a musical instrument.
Brooks, it's a pawn shop. They used to be all over the place, especially in the biggest cities like NYC. You don't go there to take out a loan to buy a gun or a ring. You bring in your jewelry, your gun, your Gibson SG and use it as collateral for a loan. The pawnbroker gives you a "ticket" for it and holds it. You generally are supposed to come back each week and pay the agreed-upon interest payment, until the date you're supposed to come back and pay back the loan (at which point you get your goods back) but if you don't come back....then he can sell your stuff in order to recoup his loss on your bad loan. Back in the day many working folks couldn't go to a bank and get a loan because they didn't own a house to use as collateral or have someone sign as their guarantor, but if they didn't need too much money they could take some personal item down to the pawnshop and get a loan on it. I have heard stories about people who, due to a mismatch between payday and bill paying day would pawn and redeem the same items every month. Nowadays you have things like "payday loans." Pawnbrokers can simply offer to buy items outright instead of making a loan, in which case they're just acting as second hand shops.
ReplyDeleteI know it's a pawn shop; sorry if I didn't make that clear. But I've never seen one that so emphasized particular items for trade
ReplyDeleteI think you could hide a firearm inside a trombone.
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