7 Tips for Buying Jewelry at a Pawn Shop

Pawn shops can be a great source of jewelry. Many of them offer better deals than specialized jewelry stores, and their selection tends to be fairly wide. Unusual pieces are also more common in pawn shops than in jewelry stores. It still pays to shop carefully, so there are a few tips you should keep in mind to make sure you make the right choices at the store.

Do Research

The jewelry market is fairly complicated. For example, diamond are graded based on several characteristics, and it can be hard to understand their quality unless you know about all of those metrics. There are also plenty of different alloys used to make metal items, and each one has a different value. You should do some research into the types of jewelry that are most interesting to you to make sure that you can understand what you are buying and make informed choices.

Be Open To Surprises

You should always expect to run into unusual items at pawn shops. Their inventory is much more flexible than that of many other stores, since it is determined by the people who sell to the store. That is one of the biggest reasons to shop there. You can often run into items that you never knew existed and would never think to shop for on purpose. You should remain open to investigating those items, even if you initially went into the store with something specific in mind. You simply never know what you will find, and there is always a chance that you will run into a hidden treasure that you will never find anywhere else.

Study Negotiation

Most pawn shops are open to haggling over prices, so you can save a lot of money by studying basic negotiation techniques and understanding your biases. For example, most people are vulnerable to the anchoring bias, which causes them to compare all offers to the first price that they hear. You can take advantage of that by setting the tone for early negotiations. You should also study body language carefully to see how the manager feels and gauge their reactions. Mastering negotiation techniques takes some time, but it is the key to getting great deals.

Take Your Time

You should never feel rushed when you are looking through a pawn shop. There will normally be a lot of items to check out, so you should schedule enough time for a long visit and investigate them thoroughly. Shopping quickly leads to misunderstandings and mistakes, so you should take it slow and make sure you know what you are buying.

Look For Certifications

Most people are not qualified to assess jewelry on their own. It is simply too complicated and relies on too many little details that are easy for amateurs to miss. That is why there are professionals who can examine jewelry and offer certifications as to its quality. You should look for items that have that certification available. You can still buy those that are uncertified, but you do need to be aware that you are taking a risk when you do so, and you might end up making a mistake.

Know Your Budget

It is easy to run through your funds and go over your budget if you keep running into exciting jewelry that you did not expect to buy. That is part of the appeal of using a pawn shop, but you do need to keep your impulse purchasing under control. You can do that by making a strict budget before you head into the store. Do not allow yourself to go over that budget.

Trust Your Instincts

Ultimately, the value of jewelry is a little bit subjective. A piece that is beautiful to one person may not be beautiful for the next. That means that you should trust your instincts when deciding which pieces are worth buying. You should still try to be informed, but y our preferences should take priority over any checklist of traits that make people think a piece of jewelry is valuable or not. Buying the ones that you like will ensure that you are satisfied with your purchases.