Depreciation In All Things

In a world as fast moving as ours, the next latest and greatest gadget is always just around the corner. It’s great being able to upgrade your phone,

laptop, tool, or even your car almost every year. But what about the item you have now? Is it still worth what you paid for it last year or even 6 months ago? The problem with companies coming out with new tech every year is the models from years past lose a significant portion of their value.

We often associate the term ‘depreciation’ with vehicles but every consumer product suffers from it. Phones, TV’s, tools, musical instruments, firearms, etc. As soon as something new comes to the market, the older version is worth less. Because of this when we value your items for pawns we use auction sites such as eBay to get an idea of the worth of something that is used. The price we pay for something brand new in a retail store can be far different than the actual worth of that item.

How We Value Items

Even when issuing short-term pawn loans, most pawn shops will make an offer of roughly 20% less than their buying offer and that is due, again, to the depreciation factor. For example, if a phone is pawned in October for its current value but a newer version of that phone is released the next month as the holiday season approaches, the phone that was pawned has just lost a significa

nt amount of value. So pawn shops will factor this into the amount when giving loans on items.

We do our best to accurately value items that come into the store and since most of the products we see are used depreciation plays a large factor in that value. For more information on what you have and what it’s worth stop into one of our stores. Even if a deal can’t be made we will give you an estimate on what it’s worth.