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If you’ve ever spent your morning commute daydreaming about starting afresh with your career, this feature is for you. Each week, our Money team speaks to someone from a different profession to discover what it’s really like.
Today, we chat to James Constantinou, owner of pawnbroker chain Prestige Pawn.
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You can’t train for it… I was born into wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, so I picked it up from experience. It’s something that I love doing, and there’s not a course for it. If we’re talking about my employees, they are all highly skilled individuals who have trained and become experts in their fields. We have around 60 experts who all excel in a range of specialisms – such as gemologists or art. My skills lie in pulling them together and keeping the work going. Those in their specialised fields will have degrees, diplomas and have studied for years. They can look at the fake Rolexes from today and compare them to the real ones from 10 to 15 years ago – there’s almost no comparison. It’s really difficult to tell the difference between fake and the real deal in some circumstances.
People think my job is lots of TV, helicopters, boats and aeroplanes… But the day-to-day running of the business isn’t always like that. There are the normal headaches of staffing rates, leaky air con units and floods – and all other things that go alongside. It’s not quite as glamorous as how it’s portrayed.
It’s a misconception to say we charge high and unfair interest rates… The monthly rate starts at 2%, and I don’t advise people to take a pawnbroking loan out for a year or two – we only offer up to seven months, and most of our customers redeem in around three.
You can’t go into the high street and borrow £100,000 within an hour… but in one of my stores, you can, so it’s quite rewarding to help people when they need it. When you are approached by someone who needs cash for something urgent and has been to the banks to…
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