Area stores think 'Pawn Stars' TV show brings positive light to business

When he was having a bad day, he’d take it down off the wall and play for a few minutes. Then one day a customer came in and wanted to buy it.

“He didn’t have the heart to say ‘no,’ ” said store owner Perry Lewin.

With the popularity of “Pawn Stars” on the History Channel, people are finding out that pawn shops aren’t the seedy, scary places they might have thought they were. Lewin has met Rick Harrison from the show and says he’s a funny, friendly guy, and that the show has done much to bring pawn shops out of the shadows.

Harrison’s narrative at the beginning of his show includes the phrase, “I never know what’s going to come through that door.”

One of the oddest things Lewin has accepted as a pawn was someone’s pet cockatiel.

“The guy called me and said he was going out of town for 30 days and asked me if I’d take his bird,” Lewin said.

Lewin is a third-generation jeweler whose father and grandfather ran a jewelry business in Chicago. After college, Lewin entered the family business, and when he got a chance to open a store in Decatur, he decided to make it a pawn shop, too. He and his staff have to know a little bit about a lot of things to make good offers, but he employs people who are experts in their fields. Wittig, for example, is a working musician. Jerri Harres used to work for K’s Merchandise and handles jewelry. She can resize, repair or even create a custom piece. Doug Peak is the firearms expert.

The store offers a warranty, and power outlets are available near amplifiers, computers, electronics and stereos so customers can test them for themselves.

Millions of people nationwide have no bank account, Lewin said, yet when an emergency arises, they need a loan. He has regular customers who come back again and again, and just as many who come not to pawn items, but to buy or sell.

One item, still in a back room waiting to be prepped for sale, is a marble Louis XVI clock. It belonged to a man who inherited it, had no use for it and brought it to Lewin.

Such items are rare finds, however. The most common items pawned or sold at Decatur Jewelry and Pawn are jewelry, followed by electronics and game systems. The number of flat-screen TVs alone is mind-boggling.

Philip Worthey, manager of Pawn King on East Eldorado Street, said the weirdest thing he’s taken in was a real leopard-skin rug. Yes, including the head.

He agrees that pawn shops have an undeserved reputation for being seedy, but one way he tries to combat that image is by keeping his store clean and bright, refusing pornographic movies as pawns and instructing employees to refrain from foul language on the sales floor.

“They wouldn’t do that, anyway, they’re good people,” Worthey said. “I want this to be a place where people feel comfortable bringing their kids in, without fear they’ll see or hear something they shouldn’t.”

One thing Pawn Stars gets wrong, though, Worthey said, is that people aren’t lining up to bring in valuable antiques or rare collectibles into a pawn shop. Most of the ones who show up at Harrison’s Las Vegas store are there because he’s on TV and they hope they will be, too. A regular pawn shop rarely sees that sort of thing.

Shoppers looking for items such as jewelry and electronics can save a bundle by buying from a pawn shop, he said.

People often don’t realize that diamond jewelry, unless the diamond is very large, isn’t valuable for the stones. Only the gold matters.

Decatur Coin and Jewelry owner Bennie Strumpher has a container full of small diamonds that have been removed from jewelry, but he doesn’t bother to do that anymore. It’s not worth the effort.

What makes diamonds expensive when you buy them at a jewelry store is the labor to set them plus the cost of the setting, he said. But like a new car, as soon as you leave the store, the value drops enormously, and resale value is dependent on gold prices alone. Strumpher is going to send the piece to a smelter to be melted down, and base metals and stones are cast aside.

“These go into a landfill,” he said. “Diamonds are dirt cheap.”