How to set your loan percentage at the pawn counter
Short answer: the loan percentage is the share of an item's resale price that you lend. It has to cover the risk that the item is not redeemed, the time and cost of selling it, and the chance that its price falls meanwhile. Set it per category, write it down, and review it against your own results.
What the percentage has to cover
- Items that are not redeemed. You will sell them, and the sale has to repay the loan.
- Time to sell. Some items sell in days, others sit on the shelf for months.
- Price movement. A phone loses value every month; gold moves with the market, up or down.
- Your costs. Storage, insurance, staff time and the sale itself.
Why one percentage for everything is a mistake
Gold has a public reference price and sells easily. A laptop of a model that has just been replaced loses value fast. A single percentage either lends too little on gold, which sends good customers elsewhere, or too much on fast-ageing electronics, which turns unredeemed items into losses.
Start from the resale price, not the purchase price
What the customer paid for an item years ago does not matter. The percentage is applied to what the item is likely to sell for now, which is why the resale price has to come from real recent sales and not from asking prices.
Review it with your own numbers
- For each category, look at how many loans were not redeemed.
- Compare what those items sold for with what was lent on them.
- If a category keeps selling below the loan, lower its percentage. If it always sells far above, you may be lending too little.
Make it the same at every counter
A written percentage applied by a tool gives the same answer at every branch and on every shift. Exceptions are still possible, but they become decisions, not habits.
How PawnMeter does it
Each shop sets its own loan percentage, and gold has its own setting. PawnMeter applies it to the resale price from real sales and shows both numbers, so the clerk sees the price and the loan side by side.
PawnMeter: Type the item. PawnMeter shows the resale price and a suggested loan, calculated only from what comparable items really sold for. When there is not enough data, it says so instead of guessing.
Become a pilot partner