New laws for Coin Store Owners in Oklahoma seems a little invasive...what are your thoughts...?

I recently talked to my LCS owner and he told me that starting on 1 Dec, due to new legislation that was passed in the Oklahoma courts, all coin store owners will be required to log all silver and gold that is bought while they operate their business and put in them in plastic/paper bags for a period of ten days. This is done so that when local law enforcement asked them about certain sales of gold or silver they will have the items in questions on hand, the transaction bill, and it MUST be kept in a bag at all times??? The following link takes you to a site when an Gold Exchange owner is arrested for knowingly concealing stolen property. Here is the link:

http://www.kswo.com/story/33133689/business-owner-charged-with-concealing-stolen-property.

The woman that stole the items in Texas sold them to the owner in Lawton, OK for $800 (the rings were worth $10,000) When asked by the police he denied the transaction, when asked for paperwork he denied having that too. The police then brought the lady inside his business and all of a sudden remembered her but could not come up with the law enforcement's requests. They even asked him for the video footage and he stated that he deletes the video every night. I was told this information from my LCS owner and the newstory. The LCS owner stated that it is suppose to help law enforcement protect both the buyer and seller. He believes that it might fringe on his privacy rights as the state will have access to all his assets. The ruling is under appeal at the moment. I was just wondering if the members of this forums think that the state has this right or if they don't. Please just want opinions, and not fighting. Thanks in advance.

 

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My gut reaction is, "Well, is this more tolerable than a system which makes stealing and fencing coins/precious metals easy for the dumbest of criminals?"

Like everything, an appropriate opinion is probably more nuanced than that, but I'd sure like to stop reading about a coin dealer being murdered for their stock once or twice every year. If it were a lot more difficult to get rid of stolen coins - like via a system which requires purchased coins to be held long enough for a theft report to be acted upon - dealers wouldn't be such attractive targets.

And fewer morally-challenged dealers would be so willing to buy under suspicious circumstances, which is the other half of the problem.

 

I don't know about other states, but the laws regulating pawn shops in Florida are very, very strict. They are that way to protect the public against theft, burglary, robbery and the ultimate fencing operations for disposing of the "goods".

If it's good enough for the pawn shops, then it should be good enough for the coin and/or bullion dealers.

Chris

 

For the exact same reasons. And if your business model includes that waiting period from the beginning, it's not difficult to plan for.

 

My first thought is that courts don't make laws. My second thought is if he actually said that, he's full of . . .

 

If you go into this business, you should know the laws and build into your business model the cost of capital you have to tie up during the waiting period.

The whole point to these laws - and they go back a long, long time - is to ensure that records are kept and law enforcement can match purchased property against stolen goods reports. Hence the requirements to wait a while before re-sale.

So what happens is that pawn brokers either break the law or find ways to skirt the intent and the laws get changed. If you are an honest businessman it makes your business more complex... if not, well, you are as likely to break the new law as the old.

 

Outstanding answer. Thank you.

 

Ditto!

Chris

 

Shoot them all. Let god sort them out.

Chris

PS. This will probably get the "dreaded edited".

 

So, Chris, pretend to be eridite and quote from a source:

Of course, then once you reveal the source as Wikipedia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnaud_Amalric), well "Tis better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."

 

Actually, exactly what is wrong about Wikipedia? I don't think I would use it as an academic source, but for casual information on many things that don't verge on the political or controversial... why not?

 

The only real problem with these laws can be the holding period. Your assets are now tied up for ten days (at one time in Louisville the period was 30 days) and gold and silver can be very volitile. If the metal make a large move in the wrong direction it can cost you your shirt.

The answer to that if it turns out to be a problem is to offer much lower prices when buying so a downturn won't hurt you. But this will hurt all honest sellers. (Not to mention providing a windfall if the metals move in the other direction.)

I have no problem with video, pictures, getting id, maybe even fingerprints from a seller, but the holding period can be a problem.

 

The business just has to take this into account - which means they may not offer you as much - and the "scammer" businesses may - since they may not intend to hold it.

Once again punishing the good guys to try and control criminals.

 

Personally, I think the seller in the article is a complete crook and hope all friends here in OK who read the story remember his fat, lying face.

As for the state requiring you to hold any purchased good, I think its fair.

One item I wonder about. The "value" of the rings is probably not anywhere near $10,000. In my experience, the insured value, or "appraisal", is usually about 8 times the real value of jewelry. He is still a crook, though, due to intentionally wiping footage and lying to the cops.

 

A holding period should not be a big deal for an honest dealer. In fact, if I was a dealer, I'd welcome it with the hope it might discourage the trailer park trash from trying to foist stolen goods on me.

 

and the first time that silver tanked $1.50 during the wait period for the 100 ounces that you bought, you'd understand why this is a bad idea

 

So, how much less are you going to offer on goods that you purchase to protect yourself from losses during the hold period, or better yet, how do you know when to stop buying so as not to tie up all of your capital while you hold items to satisfy the law.

 

It has to do with the early days of Wikipedia. Since the information is open source, early adopters of Wikipedia would have to deal with poorly organized entries that were easily manipulated by pranksters. Over time, this corrected itself with more users participating in the process.

As for the OP, the law is anything BUT new. It's at least been around since 2009, per this article: http://newsok.com/article/3362643 (for the survey, just click prefer not to answer). It may just be that he's been operating illegally for eight plus years, and the courts determined that he needs to register as a pawnbroker to continue to purchase gold/silver, as well as follow their policy of the 10-day holding period.