Pawn shops usually accept gold and silver jewelry, but, after the financial crisis in 2008, some pawn shops began accepting high quality wines. “Pawning Wine: Paris Hock Shops Accept Wine” was a news story in May 2008.
 
Pawn shops in New York and London soon followed those in Paris by accepting wine. “Pawnshops for prosperous accept wine as collateral” was a Reuters news story in February 2012. “Liquid assets: the rise of wine pawning” was a story in The Telegraph (UK) in August 2013.
 
 
Trend Hunter
Pawning Wine
Paris Hock Shops Accept Wine
By Rose A. Valenta
Published: Mar 28, 2008
For the first time in history, pawn shops in Paris that normally only accept antique family heirlooms are accepting wine. According to experts, the Credit Municipal de Paris is located in a building that “happens to have 18th century cellars below ground, providing the perfect storage area for the pawned wine.” Recently, a bottle of Domaine de la Romanee Conti was hocked for €5,000.
 
Twitter
Wine Lovernews‏
@GetYourWineNews  
Topix Wine News: Sign of the times: Struggling French pawning off grands crus as: http://tinyurl.com/oaoc4m Full http://tinyurl.com/psbtf4
2:01 PM - 13 May 09
     
Reuters
Pawnshops for prosperous accept wine as collateral
By Leslie Gevirtz
NEW YORK | Wed Feb 22, 2012 4:36pm EST
(Reuters) - Some U.S. pawnbrokers are taking liquid assets - literally.
 
Along with family jewels and fine art they will accept wines as collateral for loans to help ease cash shortages of businesses and people on all rungs of the economic ladder.
 
“You’d be amazed by how many wealthy individuals have terrible credit ratings,” said Jordan Tabach-Bank, head of Beverly Loan Co. in Beverly Hills, California.
 
“And besides, if you go to a bank, it can take weeks or months to get a loan. When we make a loan, it’s usually the same day,”
(...)
British-based pawnbroker, borro.com, recently lent $120,000 in exchange for 128 bottles of Chateau d’Yquem, which had an estimated worth of $250,000.
     
CNBC
‘Wine Loans’ Squeeze Liquidity from Your Cellar
Published: Thursday, 29 Nov 2012 | 11:00 AM ET
By: Izabella Kaminska, Financial Times
(...)
“Some people call it pawning, and to be honest we started off describing it as a peer-to-peer service, but now I really prefer to call it collateralised lending,” he says.
 
Wine pawning
Burton came up with idea after reading an article about the booming pawning industry and the rush for high-value security loans against such things as sports cars and art work.
 
“I thought, why can’t we lend against wine? After all it was a lot easier to value a bottle of Petrus than an Aston Martin and with Liv-Ex publishing current market prices across the globe, pricing is very transparent,” he says.
 
Financial Times
August 18, 2013 7:46 am
Fine wines pawned for ready cash
By Ellen Kelleher
Investors who desperately need cash are pawning their bottles of Château Haut-Brion, Lafite Rothschild, Margaux and Mouton Rothschild.
 
As the sluggish economy drags on, the practice of parting with fine wines for a few months to secure short-term loans of $100,000 or more at interest rates of 2.5 to 4 per cent a month is gaining traction, said Paul Aitken, founder and chief executive of Borro, a Manhattan lender.
 
The Consumerist
Using red to get back in the black
Needy Oenophiles Pawning Prize Bottles Of Wine For Cash
By Chris Morran August 20, 2013
Eight years ago, it seemed like everyone in New York City was operating a hedge fund, and many of those suddenly rich folks splurged on necessities like rare bottles of wine. Then things went sour and these briefly wealthy types had to relocate the contents of their wine cellars to a storage unit. Realizing that cash-in-hand may be more helpful than bottles of wine they may never drink, some are using their prize wine collections as collateral on short-term loans.
 
The Telegraph (UK)
Liquid assets: the rise of wine pawning
Releasing cash by selling top quality wine has never been easier, with a global marketplace readily accessible online.
By Victoria Moore
7:00AM BST 30 Aug 2013
(...)
Yes – the pawnbroker, now moving into Château Cheval Blanc and Côte d’Or as more people in need of swift cash rootle through their cellar records and ask to secure loans against what you might call their liquid assets.
 
“We’ve seen quite a lot of it in the past three years or so,” says Rob Davies of the National Pawnbrokers Association.
(...)
One of those is Prestige Pawnbrokers, whose headquarters are in Weybridge, Surrey, and who have opened a new office in Richmond.
 
“This area is growing – there are similar patterns as in loans offered against fine art,” says chief executive James Constantinou. “Our borrowers are savvy, passionate about the wines they’ve bought or collected … they’re often businessmen who did well pre-recession – well enough, anyway, to afford to buy good wine – and who are looking to raise capital in the short term.”
 
Twitter
Wine Rambler‏
@winerambler  
Apparently, Brits are increasingly pawning wine to raise cash: http://bit.ly/17tWqQI
7:24 AM - 31 Aug 13