STELLARTON – If you ask three local women what made them get into the pawn business, their answer probably won’t surprise many couples living in the county.
“Our husbands watch the show, Pawn Stars, continuously,” said Chrissie Jamieson, one of three women who recently opened East Coast Pawn Stars in Stellarton. “They always have it on.”
Jamieson, along with Barb McLellan and Denise MacRae, all of rural Pictou County, admit they really knew nothing about the pawn business when they started looking for a location in the spring of this year, but they had a feeling it could be a success.
“When Barb started talking about it, I said, ‘Can I do the jewelry? Because I love jewelry,’ and after that I was involved,” said MacRae, who still holds down a full-time job in addition to being a co-owner of the business.
Once they found their spot on Foord Street, Stellarton, it only took them about two months to open their doors.
“There was a lot of interest right from the start,” said MacRae. “People would stop and ask us when we were opening and they still tell us what a great idea this was for us open this store.”
McLellan says since she is in the process of selling a home in Halifax and closing out some businesses in that area, a lot of the store’s early stock was from her own storage units.
However, the women say, it didn’t take long for new stock to arrive in the store.
“The first months were buying a lot of stuff from people who wanted to pawn their goods, but now we are selling as much as we are buying,” said Jamieson.
Jamieson said owning such a business has been a real learning curve for them, but they are having fun doing it and working together. Although they’ve only been open since July, the women say they’ve learned what items not to accept and others that sell quickly.
“Printers don’t move very well,” McLellan said. “Guitars, amps and speakers are very popular.”
She said they’ve even had a few odd items come through the door, such as a mounted spider and scorpion from Kandahar, Afghanistan.
“We put that up on the wall and they sold in just a couple of days,” said Jamieson. “You just never know what people are interested in.”
Stock is always changing, MacRae said, and people have gotten used to stopping in every day to browse the items. She said customers range from as young as two years old to 90, although anyone under the age of 18 must have a parent with them to pawn an item.
“The kids are the cutest,” said Jamieson, ”because they will try to get a certain price from you and some of them are really good at it.”
And as much as the women may have wanted to turn off the television this past winter, they are thanking that popular TV show for helping to introduce them to the world of pawn.
“We even have our own Chumlee,” said Jamieson as she points to the husbands manning the counter. She said the men in their lives stay in the background and let the three women run the business, but they enjoy it as much as everyone else.
She also thanks the History Channel’s television show for breaking the stereotype that all pawn shops are dark and seedy places. She said many people are surprised when they walk into their store and see how bright it is.
“The nicest compliment I ever got about us is that the store is so clean,” said MacRae with a laugh.
The women say they can see a bright future in the pawn business, one they hope they will be able to expand into other areas of the county down the road.
“We didn’t know what to expect in Pictou County when we first started this,” said MacRae.
