Double up Wednesday at the Pawnshops........

PaulJ

Stopped in at a few local pawnshops today and had a score at the first stop, found a Korean made LTD EC500 Les Paul shape for a good price. Got cases for the both of them too........schweet deal!

2nd stop yielded a nice 2008 Ibanez EWC30 (Exotic Wood series) - Quilted Ash for a similarly good price.

Time to clean them up and get cracking.......

guidothepimmp

Jeepers

Thats old school scores.. you just about stole those

Congrats mate

studmissile

Where are these damn "pawnshops". Score indeed!

Chocklit_Thunda

studmissile wrote: Where are these damn "pawnshops". Score indeed!

Exactly!! Where on earth do you live, that these things keep on happening??

Congrats man! Awesome deals!

doc-phil

I was thinking the same thing. Where are these places!?

UnmagicMushroom

What the heck is stuff like that lying around in a pawn shop for?! Score for you, buddy!
?arty: :goodtimes:

And I agree with the others about where these places are. The closest pawn places where I like are like cash crusaders and whatnot and I wouldn't touch most of the music gear with a ten foot pole.

AlanRatcliffe

Congrats pn two great finds Paul! :goodtimes:

I think to find things like this at those prices, you've got to be a dedicated pawn shop trawler and check in frequently. Still, even doing it like that, chances are you'll only find a few bargains each year.

And no, I don't class places like Cash Convertors or Cash Crusaders as proper Pawn Shops. Most of the real ones are tucked away in side streets.

singemonkey

Such cheap

So guitar

Wow

Very bargain

arjunmenon

singemonkey wrote:

Such cheap

So guitar

Wow

Very bargain

+1.

Is that Jabba the Mutt then, Singe? ?

doc-phil

The EMG's in that LTD are probably worth more than R650 alone.. still feeling jealous about this!

Singemonkey - classic post. ?

PaulJ

Alan is correct, I'm a dedicated pawnshop trawler and I've found 80% of my guitars in pawnshops over the years and I've built up relationships with a lot of the owners.

The one thing you have to keep in mind is that in the months of January and February a lot of people have cash flow problems once they've blown the xmas bonus and there's a long wait until next payday after christmas, the first thing to go are the none essentials and guitars laying about the house tend to be the first items out the door.

Once they pawn the guitar they have 30 days to either pay back the entire loan or pay the interest on the loan. People tend to only pay the interest on the loan per month and this just digs them deeper into debt, so after +/- 2 months of only paying the interest, they're already too far down the rabbit hole to ever think of getting the instruments back. Case in point is the Gibson Les Paul Studio I picked up the other day, the guy pawned it for maybe R900, so he kept coming in and paying the interest for 6 months, so now he's already R1500 in the hole on top of the R900 he's borrowed, eventually he gives up and the guitar gets sold.

So if they miss one payment, it automatically gets put on the floor. With the internet these days a lot of the pawnshop owners just Google the guitars and slap on the retail prices, but others just want to get the loaned amount back + a little profit. (You can just imagine how much these people actually get for their instruments, next to nothing!)

Chatting to a few of the pawnshop owners regarding how business is going, most of them have loaned out 90% of the allocated monies for loans against items that were pawned, this forces them to make as much money as quick as possible to build up their cash flow again and this is when the bargains are to be found.

After visiting a few pawnshops over the past month or so it's very sad to see people selling kids christmas gifts, I came across 2 when I was in the shops, one guy (with his daughter standing next to him) was pawning his 5 year old's brand new Leap Pad with all the accessories which she obviously got as a chritmas gift and the other was pawning her sons new playstaion 3 which was also a xmas gift and you could see how upset he was standing next to her.

Unfortunately it's the way it goes and if you can't manage your money correctly and have to sell your kids gifts that you gave him a month ago, I have no sympathy for you. Maybe don't buy it in the first place and get them something a little less expensive. (I do feel for the kids, but not for the parent)

But on the plus side, this allows me and others to find bargains which would usually cost 5 x the price, a pawnshop is a business and a business has got to make money.

I do look in Cash Convertors/Crusaders, but only for Music accessories Pedals/Studio equipment etc and Xbox 360 games, crickey, you can get a new xbox title which would usually cost R700 for R70 to R100, this is a no brainer for me.

Most of the pawn shops I frequent are off the beaten track and you wouldn't even know they were there, I do alot of travelling so I make a point of finding the pawnshops in the area by asking locals. I found a 1975 Gibson Les Paul custom sitting in one the other day, but the owner knew what he had so was asking R25000.

I ended up playing the LTD all night last night and it screams like a demon! Will try and post a sample soon.

flatfourfan

damn that LTD is schwwwweeeet.

PaulJ

All cleaned up and testing her out, excuse the bored look and sloppy playing, it was late.........

doc-phil

Sounds awesome ?

What's your guitar signal chain?

PaulJ

Running straight into Studio One V2 with Guitar Rig 5 - Dual Channel with a little compressor and High pass filter from Iztope Ozone 5

here's another sample:

MatthewYeoman

PaulJ wrote: Stopped in at a few local pawnshops today and had a score at the first stop, found a Korean made LTD EC500 Les Paul shape for R650. Got cases for the both of them too........schweet deal!

2nd stop yielded a nice 2008 Ibanez EWC30 (Exotic Wood series) - Quilted Ash for R500.

Time to clean them up and get cracking.......

The wood on that Ibanez is...stunning. I worked in the paint/finish department for a guitar manufacturer in Canada. It was largely my fault, quite proudly, that a bunch of exotic wood guitars they had were actually completed. I wish like hell that I could have gotten my hands on a piece of quilted ash like that.

Shibbibilybob

That'll be a laminate for sure though.Still lovely and useful, just not as elusive and hard to get hold of...not to mention expensive. At which Canadian manufacturer did you work? May I ask such things?

MatthewYeoman

Ya man, I worked for Larrivee: http://www.larrivee.com/index.php

That was...2 years ago now, I think. I worked in the paint/finish department. Doing the fine sanding of the bodies, applying and baking on the first layer of finish and sanding all that. I was basically the first person to see what they would look like when done, it was good fun for a dirty job.

The great thing about working there was any time that things got boring, the rejected guitars became shop guitars and we'd play around on them.