PLEDGES UNREDEEMED.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 35, 18 March 1914, Page 6

PLEDGES UNREDEEMED.

THE PATHOS OF THE PAWN-SHOP Unredeemed pledges! There is something almost pathetic in the term, for the pawnshop is so often the last resort of struggling lives that pledge their trinkets to pay the interest on their mortgaged hopes. But a pawnshop window is more full of pathos than an auction of pledges, for the rings and bangles, watches and brooches that lie price-marked in the window are long beyond the redemption of their some-time owners. The auction of pledges is more a formality' of law with the pawnbroker than it is an enjdeavour to transmute stock into in-terest-getting cash, for the .law requires that after the pledges have been kept for twelve months they must be offered at public auction before they can be legally retained by the pawnbroker to dispose of'as he pleases. So, naturally, the pawnbroker doesn't much' care whether the bidders buy or refrain from buying, particularly when the article offered is of more than ordinary value. Usually the reserve fixed is the price lent on ttfe article, with interest added, and a quarter of the value is a very generous loan offer in most cases.

NOTHING ON SENTIMENTAL VALUE. ' ' '

The pawnbroker lends nothing on sentimental value—that's where most of the "pathos of the pawnshop lies. One sees displayed the massive, ugly gold brooches and earrings one's .grandmother wore; and guesses them to have been deposited by heirs to whom cash value was a more ijnperative need than ; sentiment. -To- the pawnbroker the antiquated lockets, (encircling bands .of faded hair perhaps), the heavy earrings and gigantic brooches are merely so many- pennyweights iof gold, but sometimes the wheel of fashion-help's him to realise mor,e .than the intrinsic .value—as cameos, fpr instance,. Once they were taken for" the value of their gold mountings;' but the years passed, and the unsaleable ornaments became a craze, and the pawnbroker realised. It was the same with, earrings. . .

OUT OF FASHION, There was a sale of unredeemed pledges the other day, and amongst the exhibits " seems to be the right word—were gold-mounted boar's tusks, once worn as brooches. What aspirant to .fashion, would wear them now?' There were huge" drop-earrings of gold, looking as antique as Byzantine relics. Who wanted these examples of early Victorian jewellers' craft?-Not one, not even at the price of .the gold. They were passed in, possibly to be melted down in some later day, but who say in these' freakish yearsthat they-and the crinoline may not ! a,gain be feminine adorrimeftt. Stranger relics come into the pawnbroker's; haiids aeross the ■counter .thai those he buys at sales of bankrupts' stock. TJhese last—electroplated fruit dishes, sets of spoons, and carvers, for the most part, he can always sell for a trifle more than he paid for tKem, but there are other things more valuable which it seems he cannot sell. HISTORICAL RELICS.

Who wants the big Egyptian war medal, with its clasps for 'five battles, or the Crimea medal, with six:, clasps? Not one.. In vain .the auctioneer stresses .their sentimental value—they have none. Once they had, for their possessors, and, possibly, for the sons of their possessors. Now, to the curious bidder,- to. the auctioneer, and to the pawnbroker, they are just silver, and silver is cheap.- How do these things get into pawnshops? "One would rather think they came there by the hands of callous executors than by the hands of unremembering children or grandchildren.' Perhaps it is so with all these Other trophies of : oblivion, the lockets and cat's-eye brooches, relics of faded years, that have fallen upbn Time's dust-heap from withered breasts once beating high above * a crinoline, demurely exultant at such- proofs of a beau's ardour. . ' "TO DEFRAY EXPENSES."

-'Sold to defray expenses"—of burial f Possibly. And how "offered at public auction accordance with the requirements of the law"—to make a profit, and a bargain-hunters' holiday. Put there are other things more modern that are offered. Watches, any quantity of watches, and good watches, too. Pawnbrokers don't lend money, on the cheaper wares. The audience is few, but the bidders are fewer, and the majority are women, elderly women. It is always so at' tliese sales. The bidding is not ,eager .either,' .and watches go cheap, but not below the reserve. Time after time the auctioneer starts the bidding, raises "it" to the reserve, and withdrawn the article. -There is no clamour for the trinkets, and he makes no urgent appeal to buy—the goods, are. offered 'thics, Requirements law are fulfilled. The little adornments, some of them T#luable and. some or ordinary worth, Are passed round amongst the few e)derly, acquisitive, peering women, who aire the chief bidders, and who now and Scgain - buy a ring or a brooch if Aie Wjserve is not. higher than thirty §3billings. ACQUISITIVE WOMEN. '% Pew of the men buy, and when they <lo it is usually a watch, or a set of Spoons —something of use. But the women seize, examine, and pass round amongst themselves every little trinket that seems to be of worth, and one wonders what they will do with them, why they want these adornments—they to whom all the jewels of India would add no charm. Some of these little rings look like the of the sacrificed hopes of widows, and* maybe they are often enough: I know why men get hard-.up and. pawn their watches and tie-pins, but' a woman's jewels are different—nearly always, they are her treasured presents, And who sets higher value of sentiment on her jewels than a young woman ? There seems a story of fate's unrelenting ways in all these rings and lockets and bangles. Often a commonplace and sordid story it may be, but there are times when a little ring hints a tragedy. One such there is, a circlet of pearls and sapphires, a dainty thing once a symbol of betrothal, surely. It is bought by a large, sombre woman, bedecked with black plumes, looking like a sarcophagus to the memory of buried husbands. She slips it on her hand complacently. This, too, is one of the tragedies of the pawnshop. I know why men pawn- things, but it is something sterner than ordinary need that drives a woman to pledge the treasure of' the memories encircled in her rings. Someone else ean write the humour of the pawnshop; for me it has none. D. H.