So I go into a few music stores in lethbridge here today, and it turns out that none of them buy brass instruments. Which is sad b/c in an effort to help clean out my parents basement of their children's things I took my old Trombone from high school and figured I'd sell it. Someone may as well be using it right? So I ask my mum about what we payed for it and she figured somewhere between 400 and 600 so I'm thinking to myself o.k. so if I get like 200 bucks I'm doing fine.
But as i said before no one seemed to be willing to buy it so I ended up at King of Trade of have their 'were sort of a music store but mostly a pawn shop' ideals and I figured I'd see what I could get for it. I get up to the counter and theres this young guy at the counter and I'm going huh... this might be a bad idea. So I present the case to the guy and watch in pain as he fails to open it on the first try, attempts to pry the horn out of the case w/o undoing the latches and can't figure out how to open the storage for the slide grease. Then he's like 'well, we don't usually buy these but I'll look it up in the book'. Let's look at that statement - we don't USUALLY do this... but we've got a book that will tell us the price... huh.
O.k. so after he manages to find the trombone section he says to me this "we need to send away all instruments for cleaning at st.johns (music store in town) and that costs $40.00 and the closes one I can find to yours we buy for about $100.00 so I can give you $60.00. I'll admit I was caught a little bit off guard, I expected something lowball like 100 or 150 but... 60 bucks? So I said to the guy "I was looking at the trombones that you are selling over there that are like mine and they are going for $300.00 so can't you give me like 100 bucks for it? You'd still be making 160 on it right?" and his reply "well no if we are going to make a profit we can't go higher than $60.00 because we have to pay for it to get cleaned, have to drive up to Calgary (no idea what that was about), pay for the utilities in this place, pay my salary, and blah blah blah" - finally I just said "that's fine, I'll just put it on kijiji - or freecycle I'd feel less ripped off" and left.
So if I were to take this lesson literally what does it mean? It means that the pawn shop business must be TERRIBLE to get ahead in. If you purchase something for 60 bucks and sell it for 300 making 240 dollars you will 'apparently' JUST barely make a profit - You know b/c of all the trips to calgary and utilities...?! But then i saw that on that street there were 6 pawn shops and thought to myself oh wait... there just a rip off and that's all there is to it.
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I just got ROBBED by a pawn shop in Albuquerque run by a guy named Bob who is also the Mayor of Peralta, NM. A friend volunteered to take in over $1,000 dollars in jewelry I wanted to sell to pay for my move home. He offered, and she accepted $250.00 for 3 14k, 2 10k gold wedding bands, a Kay's diamond ring with 100 VS-1 diamonds, a silver coin .999 silver, a gold necklace worth 100. And a 1889 morgan dollar. He told her that some of the diamonds werent real but he bought them anyway. She knew i needed 600 for all that and that piece of shit offered 250.00. What a rip off! Don't do it people! Dishonest bottom feeders don't care about you. He will make 2000 off of my 225.
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