March 28, 2024

Virus Revives Italy’s Age-Old Shadow Safety Net: The Pawnshop

“When things are going well you can buy your stuff back,” said Claudio Lorenzo, 65, a crossing guard who stopped working when schools closed and who waited outside the pawnshop of a Milan bank to pay interest on his and his wife’s wedding rings. “When things are going bad, you can’t.”

In July 2018, Affide’s parent company, Dorotheum, an auction house and pawn credit service based in Vienna that is more than 300 years old, bought the pawn unit of the Italian banking giant UniCredit. In February, Dorotheum bought its largest pawnbroker competitor, Creval, and now has more than 40 branches throughout Italy.

Affide is headquartered in a 16th-century palace in the Mount of Piety square in Rome, the home of pawnshops for centuries, purposefully established near the old Jewish Ghetto.

Mr. Steger said big banks had turned away from their pawnshop roots at precisely the wrong time, with the economic fallout from the virus sure to generate a need for ready cash.

“There’s movement,” he said as he looked at experts examining gold rings and watches through loupes in a marble hall. In an adjacent “Renewal and Disengagement” department, clients paid interest or bought back their items. Above their heads, black numbered boxes transported possessions from an upstairs vault, moving slowly along a suspended track like an upside-down train set.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/world/europe/italy-coronavirus-pawnshops.html

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