JUNE 2015

Diary Of A PawnbrokerFeatures

There are TV documentaries about nearly everything these days. There is ‘Storage Wars’ – the bidding and selling of uncollected lock-up items in America, ‘Trawler Wars’ battling the North Sea to make a catch and even ‘Goggle-box’ – an amazing concept where we watch people watching the TV programs we would be watching if we weren’t watching the people watching them!

Pawnbrokers are no exception and a new series called ‘Posh Pawnbrokers’ has just begun. We were one of 6 pawnbrokers originally listed to be filmed with our 6 branches and focussing on our elegant ‘London Road’ shop in Liverpool. We had several visits from the film crew and they spent as much time filming and interviewing myself and the team as the customers themselves. The main shoot began in December and our slot to be filmed was due in mid-March.

“We have a potential customer with something unusual. Would you be willing to lend against or buy a World War 2 tank?” asked the producer.

“Not really!” I replied, “I don’t know the first think about tanks! Let alone where to store it or what its worth. Don’t you have any Rolex or diamonds we can look at?”

“It’s the tank that interests us” came the reply, “we will soon find someone to help you with the value but we would need to film you driving it on a range and testing it out”

Now we were talking. Every boys dream ticket driving a tank and getting to keep it afterwards. It would be a great way to get through the traffic on my shop visits and would look fantastic parked in the Tesco carpark outside our Seacroft shop.

After a bit of reflection it dawned on me this might not go the way I had planned! To make interesting TV we would have to move away from our core business and become the characters ourselves a bit like the ‘Goggle-box’ crew.

‘Just think of the advertising’ I kept telling myself and my team – it will really promote the business.  The thing is, none of us really wanted to make fools of ourselves on TV and we would have all found it very embarrassing after the initial one liner of being a ‘Pawn Star’ had worn off.

Never mind, think of the advertising, think of the advertising!

In the second week of March I received a call from the producer telling me that they now had enough coverage from the initial 4 companies they had filmed and they wouldn’t be using our business for this series but would definitely like to film us for series 2, should the show be a success.

I have to say I was privately relieved but quite disappointed at the same time. It would have been pretty interesting to take part hopefully the series will be a success and I will certainly enjoy viewing it. They say we all have 15 minutes of fame. I think I will just have to wait a little bit longer for mine!

Chris Brown

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