H&T Pawnbrokers

With over 150 branches together with their 50 Gold Bar stores (walk in and sell your gold shops) H&T Pawnbrokers (Harvey and Thompson) have the UK’s largest chain of pawn shops.

Unfortunately they only accept jewellery in their pawn shops and not only that but it will have to be gold, platinum or set with diamonds.  They will take most types of jewellery though including bracelets, chains, rings and earings as well as watches.

Depending on their valuation of your jewellery item you can borrow from as little as £5 and up to as much as £100,000. You can also take in several items to increase the amount you can borrow.

As is standard with UK pawnbrokers, the H&T loan agreement will be for a total of 6 months and you can settle the debt at any time within the 6 month period and only pay interest on the months that you were in debt. There are no monthly repayment plans to worry about.

How Much Will It Cost?

While H&T Pawnbrokers are not the cheapest option, they aren’t the dearest way to raise some emergency cash. If you were to borrow £300 for the full 6 months you would have to pay them a total of £444 of which £144 are their interest charges.

That’s an APR of 119% which is cheap when compared to most of the payday loan lenders but expensive when compared to their main competitor Borro pawnbrokers who charge a maximum of 68.8% APR. That means the same £300 borrowed from Borro over the same 6 months would cost you just £89.82 – a not to be sniffed at saving of £54.18

The reason for the big difference in charges is because while Borro do their business online operating from one large central office in London, H&T have walk in pawn shops up and down the country and so have to pay the rents and rates for all those high street branches.

Unfortunately the above reasoning doesn’t quite stack up as a legitimate reason for their higher interest charges as H&T Pawnbrokers have just started an online pawn option and while the rates are cheaper than their walk in stores they are still far higher than Borro.

An online H&T loan of between £250 (their minimum online amount) and £999 will cost you 6% per month making an APR of 85% while a Borro loan of between £100 and £9,999 will cost just 4.99% per month making an APR of 68.8%

How It Works

H&T keep it nice and simple. Take the item you wish to pawn along to one of their branches and they will make you an offer on the spot or on occassion you may be asked to leave the item and call back later.

Once they have valued your item they will make you a loan offer. It is important to understand that when they value an item they are putting a price on what they think the item would sell for at auction which is where the item would end up should you decide not to settle the debt.

Don’t expect to be offered £100 for a watch that cost you £120 new because the offer will be for less than they expect the item to be worth at auction to ensure they can retrieve their money should they need to.

If you accept the loan offer you will need some form of identification and proof of address such as a recent utility bill. Photocopies are not acceptable, you must take the originals.

Our H&T Pawnbrokers Review

If you need to raise anything up to £100 and if they have a branch in your town then H&T Pawnbrokers is certainly a better option than a logbook or payday loan. Their interest charges do not compare favourably though with their main competitor, Borro Pawnbrokers so if you are wanting to borrow more than a hundred quid we recommend you give H&T Pawnbrokers a miss and use Borro.

You can visit the Borro web site by clicking here

You can visit the H&T Pawnbrokers web site by clicking here