TIPS FROM THE TOP
THIS HIGH-END PAWNBROKER, 53, WHO HAS MADE MILLIONS FROM PRE-LOVED LUXURY ITEMS, REVEALS WHAT HIDDEN GEMS YOU CAN CASH IN
What was your background?
I had a problem with school – mainly taking instructions. The teachers told me I wouldn’t amount to anything, which probably fuelled my later success. I left school at 15 and had an interview at Tesco. I was so nervous, I asked if I could go to the toilet halfway through. I climbed out of the window and ran across the car park. I remember the manager watching me in astonishment through the window. I took a labouring job and saved enough to go travelling in Europe. I started buying and selling old cars and by my mid-twenties owned 15 properties, which were being rented out. By my thirties, I was building new houses.
So it was going well?
It was – until 2008 when the financial crash happened and the banks pulled in loans. It set off a domino effect in the market. My friends were pulling their kids out of private school and moving in with their inlaws yet they still drove Ferraris and Bentleys, still owned Damien Hirst art and their wives wore Cartier.
I thought, ‘This is ridiculous, they have all these assets and they have no money.’ I started wondering about pawnbrokers. But they were Dickensian in their approach, with old-fashioned websites, and I thought, ‘Why aren’t they sexing this industry up a bit?’ I applied for a single pawnbroking website and found a shop in Weybridge, my local area.
How did you start?
We built a simple off-the-shelf website, which cost about £200, had a counter and a safe in our little shop but nobody knew Prestige Pawnbrokers were there. We had been open three days when someone walked in. I jumped up and said, ‘How can I help you?’ and it turned out he wanted a haircut from the hairdressers next door and had walked in by accident. I was so desperate I felt like sitting him down and cutting his hair myself, just to earn a tenner. Eventually a man walked in with a piece of art. He’d paid £50,000 for it at Bonhams 15 years earlier. It was easy to check out the provenance and I did a £30,000 loan on it that evening. Three days later, a guy came in with a Ferrari and I lent him £50,000. Within eight months, we had a healthy loan book of over half a million quid.
You don’t just loan, you sell preloved too. What’s in demand?
Pre-loved is becoming huge in terms of environment and recycling. Now it’s cool for women to tell their friends, ‘I didn’t buy a new one, this bag is second-hand.’ We really fuelled the second-hand handbag market in the UK and when we did a fly-on-the-wall TV programme, Posh Pawn, our phone started ringing off the hook. Up until then, people weren’t selling second-hand bags so they had ten-grand bags sitting at the bottom of their wardrobes.
What types of handbags make the best investment?
Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Hermès retain their value the most. Perhaps the best are Hermès because they hand-stitch all their bags in limited numbers and you can wait three or four years just for one of these bags new. However, I can source that bag for you and they’re all immaculate and as good as new. The smaller Hermès bags are now cool but it all depends who is seen with the bag – someone like Kim Kardashian or the Queen sends demand spiralling.
Who creates more demand – Kim Kardashian or Her Majesty? Kim Kardashian. Sorry.
Another great investment?
Brands like Rolex have a strong secondhand value – in some cases, even better than new. They make a limited number of watches, all handmade, and some have a waiting list. I’ve had people bringing in watches that have cost £15,000 new and I’ve given them £20,000 for them because there’s such a demand.
So what can go wrong?
The team is trained to judge the markets. It’s not just about knowing the current value. As well as buying and selling, we’re still loaning against an item and that loan is seven months – so we need to know what the item will be worth in just over half a year. Someone came in once with some Rolf Harris art they wanted to pawn for 50 grand. It was three weeks before the story broke but I was warned that something was about to break about Harris. So I turned the art owner down – and said, ‘I hate to bear bad news but it’s not going to be worth much in a few weeks.’ They thought I was crazy but, sure enough, the scandal broke and you couldn’t give Harris’s art away.
TOP TIP ‘Your desire for gain has to be greater than your fear of loss. This is the opposite of a safe and boring job’
Mistakes, you’ve made a few…
When you start out, you have to be careful about clients. I got tucked up by a guy who parked his Rolls-Royce across the road and came in wearing a cravat with a lovely piece of art. He was so posh, like Little Lord Fauntleroy, and I was about to lend to him. But then just some tiny little bell rang in my head. I googled him, asked around and it turned out he’d done this numerous times. The art was a con.
What have been the favourite items you’ve loaned on?
Some letters from a young Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones, who were about to become famous. They were discovered in a loft and he’d written to his mum about having his hair cut, saying he hoped she wouldn’t be cross when she saw his new style. He was a young man with the world at his feet, and a few months later he was dead. It was so moving to read these. On a funny note, we’ve had fossilised whale vomit, which turned out to be worth about 70 grand, and a pair of Queen Victoria’s bloomers, which fetched around £12,000.