Posh Pawn’s James Constantinou, The Man From Uncle

Not one for conferences – they bore him to tears – James joined the National Pawnbrokers’ Association and thought it would be good for business to attend one of its annual conventions.

“I felt we were a bit frowned upon, these new guys turning up with all bright colours on their windows and talking about Ferraris,” he laughs. Other members weren’t happy about us coming into the arena. You’re always going to get people who are a little bit jealous, but the market is so competitive that they realised quite quickly from watching the programme that they needed to diversify, otherwise they were going to be left behind.”

“It was quite funny because it changed from ‘Who is this guy, who does he think he is, it’s never going to work, I’ll give him six months before he’ll be out of to up our game, let’s look at what he’s doing and emulate it in some way’. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved and what we’ve done for the industry. All we hear from the public is ‘I would never have thought of using a pawnbroker if we hadn’t seen your show’.”

“Other NPA members often say they think we’re the best thing that’s ever happened to pawnbroking, which is a great thing to have said about you.”

So is pawnbroking as much fun as he’d thought it would be? Apparently, yes.

“I get to play with all the toys I love, you see, rather than just sending a guy down with a notepad to do an inspection. We don’t play with anyone’s toys once they’re left, or course. They’re stored in the right manner. If they need to be maintained, they’re maintained, and if it’s wine in bonded storage it rarely gets moved but is just transferred to our account at the same facility.”

So what motivated him to go into pawnbroking?

“I wanted to make some money,” he says, looking me straight in the eye. “There’s no point saying I did it for the love, because that’s not true. I did it to build a profitable business and because I thought I might enjoy it, too. I didn’t go out to change everything but it quickly transpired that the industry did need a bit of shaking up and was stagnant in its approach. The industry has changed and people perceive pawnbroking in a different light now than they might have done prior to the programme.”

“My own family used pawnbrokers and, according to my mother, that was a regular occurrence. They needed to, almost as a way of life. The stigma, historically, was more for the middle and upper classes. But that’s obviously changed with what we’ve done. It’s not all about being down on your luck, as you might be investing in another business or opening a gastropub. If you’ve got a Bentley in the garage or a wine collection, use it, because it’s a very effective and economical way of borrowing money.”

“We’re very discreet. And we’re not interested in selling people’s items. We work with them so they get their items back. There used to be a bit of misconception that pawnbrokers wanted to grab your goods for nothing and sell them on. Maybe it was a reality in the past but from my point of view that’s not a good way to run your business because every time you sell one of that client’s assets, you’re losing that client.”

“We get footballers’ wives phoning up for handbags. We’ve got handbags on our online store that you can’t actually buy – Hermès, Birkins and Kellys that there’s a three-year waiting list for.”

“There’s no shame in it. We have celebrities, rock’n’rollers, politicians, all sorts of people come in and use us. Quite often they’ll ring up and say ‘James, this is who I am, can we be discreet?’, and I say just put on a pair of sunglasses and I’ll walk you straight to the back! And if the asset warrants it, we’ll go out to their home and appraise it there.”