Pawn shop sees shift in buying-selling trends - Zanesville Times Recorder

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Kristi Garabrandt The Daily Jeffersonian

Published 11:57 AM EDT Aug 16, 2020

For a local pawn shops, the COVID-19 pandemic brought a brief shift in the business transactions.

Many pawnbrokers like Anthony Enright, owner of Heritage Trading Post in Zanesville, saw an increase in people coming in to purchase items rather than pawning or selling them to get cash.

That shift was, however, short-lived as Enright has noticed that over the last week or so the shift is going back the other way with new customers coming in to pawn items.

This may be attributed to, according to Enright, the money from the stimulus checks and extra unemployment benefits running out.

Enright has not seen customers returning to sell back items they purchased, however.

For Heritage Trading Post, the shift back isn’t necessarily a negative thing, as it is bringing new merchandise back in for the business to refill the showcases.

“We were fortunate that before this all hit we had kind of a glut of inventory,” Enright said. “We had quite a bit of inventory, but this definitely thinned us out.”

Firearms, ammunition and precious metals such as gold, silver and coins seemed to be the most popular items people were buying from the business.

“Things like firearms and ammunition were becoming hard to come by for a while,” Enright said. “I think with most people, the popular ammunition rounds were like 9mm and they were almost impossible to find. If you could find it you were going to pay a lot for it.”

Enright is hopeful that the business can begin to build their inventory.

The business has always done well with firearms and ammunition. Enright attributes the increase in the sales of those along with the precious metals to these being items that people typically rush to purchase anytime there is a crisis.

The rush of sales at Heritage Trading Post seemed to occur within the two to three weeks prior to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine ordering the shut down of many businesses throughout the state.

It was during the three weeks that the firearm inventory at Heritage Trading Post was nearly depleted and the business had sold between 50% to 75% of the ammunition they had in stock.

According to Enright, once the non-essential businesses in Ohio were forced to shut down, business for his store became really slow. It has since started to increase but has not yet made it back to the number of sales they were conducting pre-pandemic.

Enright hopes that if a second round of stimulus checks is issued that he will see an increase in sales again.

“Currently, business is good. During the last week or two people have been coming in to sell items again, so we are starting to get new inventory into our stores and our showcases again,” Enright said. “We are starting to see that consistent flow of people. It’s definitely better than what it was. But, we still have a little way to go to get back to what it was before this all happened.”

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