One of the interesting things about being a London pawnbroker is the excitement of not knowing what clients will bring you. The initial contact, which will be online, by telephone, or with the customer visiting the pawnbrokers, will invariably throw up discrepancies between the customer’s expectations the pawnbroker’s view. Over the years, specialising in lending on luxury items, we have seen a vast array of Jewellery watches. Diamonds of all sizes colours, Jewellery from Cartier, Graff, Tiffany. Luxury watches from Rolex, Patek Philippe, IWC, Jaeger Le Coultre, Audemars Piguet, to name just a few.
Our first contact on this particular occasion with our client was by telephone, we were told that they had an extremely expensive gold gem-set mobile phone case that they wished to raise £30,000, probably for a month. Now we thought that this was one of those occasions when customers’ expectations of the resale value of a luxury item our view would differ. When you think about an iPhone case, you don’t automatically think that you will have an item that could be used as collateral for a large pawnbroking loan nor did we, we knew that phone cases can be expensive, gold plated, set with crystals, be covered in all sorts of exotic skins. But what turned up was a surprise.
A solid 18ct gold case, set with emeralds diamonds, started the surprise then on further inspection, we released that it was further set with four major pear-shaped diamonds, each weighing over 1.50cts. These four principle stones each had a diamond certificate, the certificate being issued by the Gemological Institute of America, the GIA being the most widely recognised diamond grading laboratory. The accompanying receipt verified that the client had paid £250,000 for the case. We had little concern about offering our client the £30,000 loan they required.
