The owner of Dakota Loan and Pawn Raymond Gentry has seen all kinds of financial education. From reckless spending sprees to bartering a few extra bucks on a worthless family heirloom. Especially in Shale Play USA.
Gentry mentioned that they have an 80% redemption rate on their pawns and people usually come back to pick up their items. He also stated that people sell or pawn items for various reasons, such as transitioning to different trades or wanting to move back home.
Gentry also talked about the steady sales of guns and compound bows, with a massive increase in people buying handguns to protect their properties. He mentioned that the demand for ammunition and non-lethal weapons has decreased.
He believes that the construction of houses has not been helpful for the pawn business as specialty tools are not sold or pawned.
Jason Spiess
This is a neat little piece. That little
Raymond Gentry
little buffalo.
Jason Spiess
Yeah, that's, uh, what kind of metal
Raymond Gentry
is that? Uh, that's just a little Franklin mint collector's item. ... Ok. Just, just a little flip designed to do what it does. You just look at
Jason Spiess
it. So, what does one do with those claws with these? Yeah, that seems a little,
Raymond Gentry
most of this stuff is all decorative. People buy it just have sitting around. Yeah, I'm walk around with that on your hand. I don't believe
Jason Spiess
I'm partial to knives. I don't own a gun, but I got about 15 knives. And, uh, that's why I'm just fascinated by these. Ok. All right. Uh We're with uh Ray Gentry, Raymond Gentry, pawn broker, Dakota loan and Pond. How long have you been around Dickinson? I've
Raymond Gentry
been in Dickinson off and on since 96. Steady, since 2002,
Jason Spiess
2002. That's pre oil boom
Raymond Gentry
way. Oil boom.
Jason Spiess
Yes. How has your business been pre and now that the oil boom is going on? Well,
Raymond Gentry
since the boom started, I'd say our business doubles every year. Many different reasons. Of course, people run in and need money. Come to town need money to survive till they get a paycheck oil boom. The average North Dakota and our economy has always been pretty steady.
So my business wasn't utilized as much to where the influx of people coming in from other states did use the pawn shops there. So automatically they come here, they're utilizing the, the businesses a lot more now than are
Jason Spiess
you, are you finding people are selling or are they them? Where are they? The
Raymond Gentry
pond business? A lot of people are pawning. We probably have about an 80% redemption rate on our pawns. People come back and do pick their items back up. Of course, those hard cases that people want their item back, but something else comes up and it's more important or takes precedent over them getting the item back, which is sad, but I do my best to work with them any way I can to help them get their items back. If, if they're sentimental value or whatever,
Jason Spiess
what, what are the percentages of people pawning versus people just outright selling to you? I'd probably say
Raymond Gentry
70 to 30 70 percent pond, 30% sale. Are you
Jason Spiess
kidding me? It's that high of a pond. A lot
Raymond Gentry
of times people sell, there's many different reasons that they would come in and say if they're in welding and they're transitioning to oil, they don't need their welding gear anymore. So they'll come in and, you know, get rid of that to, to help acquire some of the new tools they need for a new trade. People that have been here, I've seen guys come and go pre oil boom to now, you know, they come in and, and work a year, say 25 an hour. Well, they're paying $2000 a month rent.
They say back and after a year go, well, I can work at home for $15 an hour and pay 500 a month rent. And I live just as good and I'll be close to family. So they'll, they'll cut out and head back home after giving it a year's go. And some of the guys really just want to get out and change their environment. And North Dakota is a beautiful country if you come here and want a really nice place to live. It is a really good place.
Jason Spiess
I'm looking around. I see quite a few knives and guns and cross bows, not cross bows, but, uh, compound bows. North Dakota, obviously an outdoors type of environment. I would imagine that those types of sales have been steady in your past decade of doing business has
Raymond Gentry
been really steady. You know, usually during the spring and late winter and the summer we'll pick up and acquire guns and when hunting season comes back around, we'll diminish our guns down again. Handguns of course, have been big sellers, especially with the influx of people coming in and people looking at
protecting their properties, which are, our crime rates have changed dramatically over the last four years. And, you know, that kind of, kind of all plays together a little bit.
Jason Spiess
Um, I talked to Sheriff Clarence too. He showed me some of the increases in concealed permits in North Dakota. I would imagine you are seeing a lot. Are those people coming in here or are they buying them out? Shields,
Raymond Gentry
hardware? Well, a little everywhere. They'll, they'll go to shields or runnings, runnings has a big selection of handguns down there. Um, but they do come in and look at what we got and what we're offering for the value, you know, to save the right amount of money. That's the tricky thing in the pond business. A person will buy you because the savings is there versus going and buying a new one. How
Jason Spiess
about tools you mentioned? Uh, you know, a guy might decide to go home, sell us welding equipment and take off.
Raymond Gentry
Um, we get a lot of construction tools and stuff like that. You know, I had guys that come through from California and Washington that they would come out here didn't secure residency. No one explained to them the cost of living and a lot of jobs here want you to have residency or a permanent place to live before they hire you and end up having to sell their construction tools or whatever just to get the gas money to get back home, I've seen several of those
Jason Spiess
and, uh, do you deal at all with a no deal? ... Have you, did you notice if there was any sort of increase in gun sales around the same time these ammunition shortages were happening and any anecdotal or anything that you've seen on that,
Raymond Gentry
you know, in that market, which earlier this year, of course, we had the gun shortage, everybody was buying everything they could get their hands on guns flying off the shelves and you couldn't find them. You would pay even in a used market more than what you could have. New one for six months prior. Then when everything started changing over and none of the gun bans went into effect while everybody was buying ammunition along with the government and homeland security and social
security buying ammunition, which kind of put a really stress on the supply. So at that point in time, the gun sales really slowed down because people couldn't get the ammunition, basically a gun without a bullet. It's a pretty mean stick a
Jason Spiess
piece of metal. How about non lethal weapons? I see that you have, it looks like new zap guns. Stun guns. Obviously pawn shops are known for selling used items. Is there that much of a demand that you saw? There was a market for that? Well, at one
Raymond Gentry
point it was, we've always carried them here. The stun guns, we have pepper spray there, I would say two years ago. About the time the oil boom really, really kicked in. We couldn't keep them on the shelves. Now, it's slowed way back down. Either one, everybody has them or they bought and said we want to do pepper spray and then they move into a stun gun and it ends up into a concealed weapon permit and a handgun which diminishes the demand for the stun gun or the pepper spray.
Jason Spiess
Any other observations that you might have from a pawnbroker's eye out here in the oil patch, primarily when that surge started happening, that 2009, 2010 time frame when it just kind of skyrocketed out, obviously being on highway 22. You've had a lot of construction over the past two years that may help or hurt your business. I don't know, but just kind of some of these observations as the community is growing. Well as it
Raymond Gentry
grows. Of course, building is hard for people to keep up the traffic, of course, has greatly increased, which they're doing a really good job here in trying to get the streets in order and maintain and deal with the influx of population business has picked up on the note. Like I said, the people that utilize paw shops are sales.
There are certain items I don't get in specialty construction tools are tough. She's lot carpeting and there are so many houses being built. We just aren't seeing any of those items. ... Other than that I think everything is really running smooth here. All
Jason Spiess
right, thank you. Much. Appreciate that. Yeah. Good interview. All right. It wasn't too bad. Huh.
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The Crude Life Podcast: Raymond Gentry is the Pawn Star of the Bakken