|
 In an earlier life, I worked at a pawn shop where I routinely dealt with all sorts of used items, notably tools. While it's not as predominant as you may initially think, there is no doubting the fact that stolen goods sometimes end up in pawn shops. Pawnbrokers will never knowingly accept anything that is stolen (as that puts them as risk for criminal prosecution), but people who would steal things from another person aren't honest to begin with and will lie about how they aquired an item, even when required to sign a written affidavit affirming their claim.
Over the years, I noticed that out of all the reports of stolen goods we received, power tools easily were one the most commonly items listed. Why?
For starters, power tools are small, semi-valuable, and are often left exposed and unwatched at construction sites, in garages, in the back of trucks, and elsewhere. It's very easy for a petty thief to just grab it and go, then try to pawn it or sell it on the street for a quick buck.
To the tool owner, this could spell disaster-especially if your livelihood depended on your tools. If you need a tool to do a job and suddenly you don't have the tool anymore, you can't do the job until you replace the tool.
Over the years, I heard tons of sad stories from people coming into the pawn shop about how their tools had been ripped-off. What always surprised me is that barely any of these victims could tell me anything specific about what was stolen. 90% of the time, they didn't even know what BRAND their tools were, let alone a model or serial number. When an item like a power tool is stolen, the odds against recovering it are low to begin with, but if you don't even know WHAT speifically was stolen from you, you stand virtually no chance of getting it back. The overworked police aren't any help in situations like this as they are way too busy to waste their time pursuing vague reports.
Most people don't know this about the pawn business, but in almost every jurisdiction in the nation, pawnbrokers are required to submit a detailed record of all their acquisitions on a daily or weekly basis. The idea is that the police will compare pawn records to stolen goods reports and look for matches. Ideally, if you are the victim of theft, you can report the specific information about your loss to the police who will enter it into a database. If the items you lost are pawned, they'll flag it and you'll stand a better chance of not only recovering your items, but also have a lead about who ripped you off in the first place.
However, the key to success with this process is to have detailed records of your property to begin with. If you just file a claim with your local police that a "Circular saw" was stolen from you, how does that help? I know our pawnshop took probably 20 circular saws in a week! There is no way a cop is going to take the time to go to every area pawn shop and ask you to pick out which saw was yours, as how could you prove it?
Therefore, it's a VERY smart idea to keep a log of the manufacturer, model and serial numbers of everything valuable you own. Keep it in a safe place, or better yet, set up a free Google Spreadsheet of this information, then it will never be lost and accessible anywhere. Keep track of everything in it, date of aquisition, purchase place, price paid, etc....some day you may be very glad to have it. Insurance companies sometimes require this information for claims and it can also be useful if you have warranty issues with an item.
Admittedly, it is a lot of work to get this going, but once you have it started, it's easy to add new items to it as you get them. One day, you may be very glad you did!
Newer news items:
Older news items:
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
