[HN Gopher] Mount of piety
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Mount of piety
        
       Author : benbreen
       Score  : 33 points
       Date   : 2021-07-17 04:47 UTC (18 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | twic wrote:
       | > The institution originated in Italy in the fifteenth century,
       | where it gave poor people access to loans with reasonable
       | interest rates. It used funds from charitable donors as capital,
       | and made loans to the poor so they could avoid going to
       | exploitative lenders. Borrowers offered valuables as collateral,
       | making the mount of piety more like a pawn shop than a bank.
       | 
       | So the Belgian one is still running. Acceptable collateral [1]:
       | 
       | Jewellery, precious stones, and gold
       | 
       | Luxury watches, gold pocket watches, and antique clocks
       | 
       | Luxury leather goods (handbags, belts, etc. - certain brands
       | only)
       | 
       | Comics and collected editions, and derived objects
       | 
       | Paintings
       | 
       | Objets d'art, sculptures, ivories, bronzes, and porcelain
       | 
       | Silverware
       | 
       | Glassware and crystal bearing a recognised mark
       | 
       | Coins of numismatic value
       | 
       | Wines and spirits of exceptional quality
       | 
       | High-end bicycles in excellent condition
       | 
       | Musical instruments
       | 
       | Now, i didn't grow up poor in Belgium, but these don't
       | immediately strike me as the kind of things that the credit-
       | hungry poor are likely to have lying around the place in any
       | great quantity.
       | 
       | Incidentally, this was an interesting list to translate (with
       | machine help!), because there are some expressions that don't
       | have really good equivalents. The French version distinguishes
       | "montres de poche" from those "a goussets", but i think a gousset
       | is just a particular kind of pocket. I'm not entirely sure what
       | "livres de collections" are, but in context it seems to mean
       | fancy hardback editions of works, like those put out by the Folio
       | Society [2]. Tableaux are paintings, not tables, Google. Cristaux
       | signes seems to mean glass crystal items marked by their
       | manufacturer - apparently British crystal is marked like that
       | [3], but i've never heard anyone be concerned about it - and it
       | seems to be a metonym for high quality. Similarly, for bicycles,
       | "de marque" literally means "branded", but here i think it has a
       | connotation of being made by a fancy manufacturer (Rolls-Royce is
       | a marque, Vauxhall is a make!).
       | 
       | [1] https://www.montdepiete.be/gages-lots
       | 
       | [2] Anyone want an 80 quid Heinlein?
       | https://www.foliosociety.com/uk/stranger-in-a-strange-land.h...
       | 
       | [3] http://www.great-glass.co.uk/glass%20notes/markd-h.htm
        
         | jsbdk wrote:
         | If poor people didn't own that kind of stuff then pawn shops
         | wouldn't exist, but they clearly do and are a good business in
         | impoverished neighbourhoods.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-07-17 23:01 UTC)