Here’s What People Pawn Across America

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Anyone can show up to a pawn shop with something valuable and walk out the door with cash. Pawn shops don’t check credit scores since the loans are collateralized, they keep long hours, and are convenient source of cash for 30 million Americans every year.

In the 19th century, Americans found their lender of last resort by looking for the industry’s “barbershop pole”: 3 dangling golden spheres. Like the rest of retail, that’s changing fast. Widespread smartphone adoption has given working-class Americans access to high speed internet. This sudden digitization lets us answer a question that’s baffled historians and stymied regulators: when Americans need cash, what do they actually pawn?

We decided to analyze pawning data from Priceonomics customer PawnGuru, an national online pawn site. What do people pawn, how much money do they get, and what are the regional differences in pawning behavior.

Across the country, the most popular category of item to pawn is electronics, especially Apple’s smartphones and laptops. However, there are tremendous regional differences. In many Southern and Western states, guns are pawned at a disproportionately high rate, while in California and New York, luxury watches are more popular. As for gender differences, women are most likely to pawn jewelry and apparel. Men on the other hand pawn guns and vehicles.

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We find significant regional differences in what consumers pawn, as well as differences in what women pawn versus men. These variations tell stories about regional identity, gender, class– and even the power of specific brands, like Apple.

To start our investigation, we looked at nearly a million pawn requests on PawnGuru’s online pawn platform, to assess the most popular categories of items that users submit on our site.

The chart below shows the breakdown of pawn requests by the category of the item: