"I chuckled and said "That's insane!". " Sounds like you guys got off to a rough start. Most pawn shop owners just stick a price on items and see if they sell. They don't care if it's a coin or a toaster. It's just an item in inventory. Over time the price may come down but someone may just come along and pay the price.
I had a similar situation at at local PM shop. I wanted some Barber halves out of the junk bin. The owner would have charged me melt, which was $10 since he just sold me a Barber quarter for $5, the one I use for my avatar. He told me that they cost $14, except a few with bad condition issues. I told him those are worth melt. He said, "they are worth what I say they are worth". He immediately referred back to his Gray Sheet. I said "why don't you sell to the person who wrote that sheet" because he kept referring to it constantly. You probably could have just told him the coin was too pricey instead.
With something like junky silver the seller needs to adjust the price with fluctuations even if all silver coins are junk to them. Any shop needs to sell items otherwise you'll have no operating capital or storage space.
I went to London in 1969, and took along 8 cartons of Marlboro's. I spent one full rainy day visiting pawn shops, offering to trade cigarettes for US coins (which few Londoners collected). I still have some of the great coins I acquired. But now with the Internet and all that data available to everyone, I doubt that you would find even a fraction of the good US coins I brought home. At that time, Marlboro's cost $1.85 a carton at the (Army) PX in Karlsruhe, Germany, near where I was stationed.
To judge??? Nice VF-XF Barber halves for 2 packs of cigarettes. A trade dollar for 3 packs. Large cents for a pack apiece. But no gold, and I was not going after silver; at that time, they only paid 10% over face for silver coins (September 1969). And the pawn dealers had no conception of scarce dates, although, I didn't FIND any scarce dates. It was a good day's work. I don't know what the dealers sold the cigarettes for, but that was the favorite brand, and I'll bet they got plenty for them. They couldn't sell them openly, as they had U.S. military stickers on the packs, and they did not have British revenue stamps. But that was none of my concern.
I received a negative reaction as soon as I walked in the door of that place. As soon as I walked in the man told me that if i wasn't there to buy something then I needed to leave. So, yes we got off to a bad start. He was rude to me from the beginning. What I should have done was walk out the door right then. In a way, I am at fault as well as the owner. I realize that I should not have retaliated with a bad attitude.I will know better next time.
And the op just goes there to see the ridiculous prices, to the op, if you know they are priced too high why even go?
Because sometimes they overlook things like errors, varieties and other things and in those cases they would be underpriced. We've all heard the stories of the guy that buys a Gibson guitar for $500 at a pawn shop only to discover later that it's a rare 1966 ES-335 valued at $5,500.
Boredom? Why does one do anything? Especially on the weekends, when I get off work, my wife is still at work and doesn't get home for a few more hours,so I have time to kill. If it's on the way home, why not? Coins are not the only things to look at in those places. You never know what you're gonna find.
I am told that silver isn't worth that much, and most people don't go to pawn shops looking for coins.
$34 an ounce is not high like gold but is much higher than it was 2 years ago. As far as people going to pawn shops looking for coins, there are more than you think there are doing that, and most of them are looking for better deals than they could get from a dealer or B&M, and they're being disappointed.
I used to visit a pawn shop in my town once a month. He did not know much about coins, and I would find a few world silver coins in the 25 cent bin from time to time. However as the months went by, he started getting a little high on his prices. I tried to purchased a couple slabbed Franklin dollars off him, the NGC price was like $32/ea, and they were bringing about $30 each on eBay. He wanted $50 each for them. I tried to talk him down, but he wouldn't budge. Sometimes he brings coins to a few of the local flea markets, and if he has a bunch of junk silver, he will sell it for melt. This is the same person I got a 1794 Franklin press token for $15 off of and flipped for $127. I think scoring at a pawn shop is all about knowledge. Maybe they got a bunch of junk silver , that they didn't have the time to sort, and taking the time to look through the lot may yield a few semi-keys or a nice condition coin.
