How to price pawn shop inventory from your own sales history

Start with what sold in your shop

Your POS holds years of the most relevant evidence there is: what your customers actually paid for the same kind of item, and how long it took. FirstCash, the largest U.S. pawn operator, describes the same order of work in its annual report: its POS recalls recent selling prices of similar merchandise in its own stores, and it also looks at metal spot prices, catalogs, blue books, online marketplaces and auction sites.

Match on what matters for the category. For tools and electronics that is brand and model; for jewelry, metal, weight and stones; for guns, make, model and condition.

Then check outside comparables

• eBay sold data. eBay’s Product Research (Terapeak) covers up to the last three years of eBay sales, with average sold prices and sell-through rates, and is available in Seller Hub at no additional charge.
• GunBroker completed items for firearms; see how to price used guns.
• Spot prices for gold and silver, which set the floor under anything you could scrap.

Use sold prices, never active listings: an asking price is only what someone hopes to get. And allow for the difference between a shipped online sale and a walk-in customer who can hold the thing first.

Setting the asking price

Aim the tag at what the item sells for, with room to negotiate if your counter haggles. If the same model has sold three times for $60 to $75, a $120 tag does not make it worth $120; it makes it sit.

Watch the gap between asking and sold by category. A category where items routinely sell well below the tag is a category that is overpriced on the floor, and it is usually where the aged stock is.

Offers and loan amounts

The offer is the asking price seen from the other end. Work back from the expected resale: offer = expected resale × (1 − target margin). For loans, remember that a forfeited item goes into inventory at what you lent, so in a category that forfeits often, the loan amount is really a purchase price.

Say when the evidence is thin. One old sale is a guess; five recent ones are a price. When there is nothing to go on, offer conservatively and note it, so the next person has a sale to price from.

When the price was wrong

Every shop misprices some things. The fix is a regular look at what has sat past its category’s normal days, repriced to what comparable items sold for. Aged inventory: mark down or sell off covers that routine.

Where PawnCounter fits

PawnCounter builds these prices from your own POS exports: a markdown list priced from comparable sales in your shop (Starter), and an offer calculator that gives a buy offer and loan amount at your target margin, with expected resale and days to sell, and says when it is working from thin evidence (Pro). Start with the free Profit X-Ray.

Sources

1. FirstCash Holdings, Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025 (SEC EDGAR)
2. eBay Help, "Product research" (Terapeak)