Scouring Pawn Shops for Cheap Guitars

By Big Cab Daddy
Mine was probably 12 years older

Mine was probably 12 years older

There are lots of different places to look for good used, cheap guitars. Pawn shops are one of my favorite ones even though I sort of have a bittersweet thing going with them. In my young and stupid days (as opposed to my old and stupid days) I lost a virtually new Ovation 12 string accoustic (definitely NOT a cheap guitar) by leaving the pawn ticket unpaid a few days too long. So let that be a lesson to any of you who make use of pawn loans from time to time.

Anyway, this time we’re walking into the local pawn shop with buying, not selling in mind. The thing to keep at the foremost of your brain even before walking in is that just because its in a pawn shop, doesn’t mean that its priced cheaply. Yes, pawn shops can be great places to pick up both used and sometimes new cheap guitars. They can also be places where you might find bargains on some not so cheap guitars like my Ovation 12 string. As I remember, it was a $400-$500 guitar back then in the 70s. I’m pretty sure I only got $100-$150 loan on it if that. So you see where the shop could have given some lucky person one heck of a deal and still made a nice profit.

That being said, pawn shops frequently price things so that they are no bargain at all. They count on the mentality of the customer walking in to be, “Hey, its a pawn shop. It must be a great deal, right?” Not so. I’ve found this to be especially true with accessories like strings, straps, cables, etc. Say you walk into your pawn shop and spot a dusty set of bass strings marked at $39. Chances are very good you could walk into the music store next door and get that same set of bass strings for $34.95. Cases and gig bags are another area where this is true. If the guitar you’re negotiating comes with a case included, fine. But if its something that the pawn shop is trying to add onto the top of the guitar sale, be darn sure they aren’t discounting the guitar $25 in order to over charge $50 on the case it comes in.

More on pawn shop cheap guitar shopping tomorrow! Till then remember that clean hands go a long ways towards making strings last longer.

~ Big Cab Daddy

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2009 at 4:29 pm and is filed under where to find cheap guitars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.