The best thing about being a pawnbroker is that I get to deliver good news. It's my superpower if you like in terms of being able to help people have more money in their pocket, by arming them with information about their items, and helping them to sell them. But how do you know whether you have potential hidden treasures in your home? Here are the top seven things that you should be looking out for that could lead to a small fortune:
Dan Hatfield
1. Fifty pence pieces
These are perhaps one of the most collected items in the UK and we all have them in our pockets. You might not think that you can make money from them – but you can actually make a small fortune. The Kew Garden fifty pence piece are currently on eBay now for about 129 pounds. And if you look at some of the fifty pence pieces that were created during the 2012 Olympics in London, one of those can fetch up to ten pounds, so a 1,500% return on your investment.
2. Jewellery
Jewellery is one of the most collectible items however it’s also one of the most thrown away too. For some reason people often don't believe that their items are worth anything. I've heard horror stories of people throwing away diamond rings that could be worth £60,000 because they thought it was glass. I once had a customer come into my shop who bought diamond rings and jewellery, and someone dumped a box of items on his front door one day anonymously and it had £1,000 pounds worth of jewellery in it. Look out for the big brands when it comes to jewellery. Bulgari, Cartier, Harry Winston and Boodles. It may well be that a relative has left you some items and you might not know what they are. I met a lady once who had a yellow diamond ring, she believed was a bit of glass. She was about to throw the ring away or give it to a charity shop. She came to me, and I was able to tell her the ring was actually worth £425,000. It changed her life. The pure look of joy on that lady's face will live with me forever.
3. Mobile phones
You could have an old mobile phone that’s worth more than a brand-new state of the art iPhone now. A pre-production prototype of the iPhone is going for £10,000 now. Even the Motorola 8000X that’s going for about £3,500 and a Nokia Sapphira 8800 that's going for £2,000. It's really interesting that obsolete technology that you could have collecting dust in your attic is worth more than an actual iPhone is now.
4. Books and comics
Something else that can be worth a fortune is books and comics originally bought for a few pence. First editions of Harry Potter books are always going to hold their value and all the Jackie magazines from the sixties and seventies are going for thousands of pounds. You may well have things stashed away in cupboards and don’t know that you have them – but literally they can add up to thousands. Take the first edition of The Dandy for instance – it’s worth hundreds of pounds.
5. Vintage computer games and consoles
These really are hidden gold mines. At the time, we all had a Sega and yours is probably collecting dust in your attic or underneath a bed or just in a corner somewhere never being used. But did you know that they’re now going for an absolute fortune at the moment? Some games from Nintendo are going for around £500. On average, each game can fetch between £40 and £50. I recently had a client who sold a a hundred Nintendo games and he made £3,500! Some of the oldest home computers are also now going for about £15,000. And even the original Gameboys are fetching in excess of £1,500.
It really is just the things that are lying around your house that you just don’t realise you have that are going for astronomical amounts of money. Take the old Amstrad's for instance, they’re selling for £1,200 now.
6. Pokemon / Football cards
Identify markets that could be of interest right now and then look at what you have that could work. Pokemon cards and football cards are perfect examples of this. Those of us who grew up in the nineties spent part of our childhood swapping Pokemon cards with friends. They've now accumulated so much in value. One card recently sold for about £44,000. The rarer cards tend to be the holographic ones. And it's the same with the football cards as well. They're worth a vast amount.
7. Pyrex dishes
Some Pyrex dishes can be worth £500 a time. I’ve heard of someone recently who had inherited some odd Pyrex dishes from his grandparents. They made about £35,000 at auction. Dishes from the sixties and seventies have a lot of kitsch value and are selling for phenomenal amounts of money.
£35 thousand at auction. Dishes from the sixties and seventies have a lot of kitsch value and are selling for phenomenal amounts of money.
The old saying that someone else's junk is someone else's treasure is absolutely true. Just because you might not love something, it doesn't mean that someone else won’t pay for it. Unless an item is beyond repair, I can't think of many things in your house today that you can't earn a living from.
Dan Hatfield is one of the presenters for ITV’s Million Pound Pawn (Thursdays at 9pm from 9th June) and runs London Road Jewellers – www.londonroadjewellers.co.uk
