SHORT TERM, SECURED BORROWING AVAILABLE IN MINUTES – that’s all pawnbroking is.
Whether you need £100 for an unexpected bill or you’re a property developer who needs £15,000 to clinch a deal, we can help.
Each of the four stores served by this website has private facilities and offers immediate service, so you can normally leave with your cash in minutes (fast bank transfer for larger sums).
Which company am I dealing with? Click here to see which company serves which location. Pawnbroking service is available only in-store, in person.
are advanced against the security of the following:
- Gold and platinum jewellery
- Diamond and gem-set jewellery
- Prestige watches, especially Rolex
QUICK AND STRAIGHTFORWARD Goods are usually valued, the loan agreed and your cash paid out within 10 minutes (larger sums by bank transfer, soon after). Unlike loans from a bank, there are no “appointment,” “booking” or “set-up” fees, nor any credit-check beyond our professional appraisal of your precious items.
FLEXIBLE Our pawnbroking contracts are for a 7 month term, but you may :
- pay to reclaim your items at any earlier time OR
- make part-payments as often as you wish within that term, OR
- renew & reduce if you need more time and this is appropriate ( click here! ) OR
- “walk away.” Following any due notification, your pledged property will be sold in order to settle the loan, interest and costs of sale. There may be a surplus repayable to you (so keep your ticket!), but if there is a shortfall you do NOT normally have to repay it and your credit file will NOT be affected.
We stress that pawnbroking is best used as a short-term credit solution. If you wish to take out a new, consecutive loan we will remind you that this is intended as a short term form of borrowing, sign-post alternatives and ask you to repay at least some of the loan capital. Advice on Renewals, making Part-Payments and Consecutive Loans can be found below. Following the COVID-19 pandemic we may still offer Tailored Support to any clients who remain affected. If this may apply to you, please contact us via info@miltons.co.uk or ask for the pawnbroking manager at your Miltons store.
SECURE All watches and jewellery taken as security for loans are held in high security safes for your peace of mind. We have a strict Data Protection policy.
EXPERT Our four stores are managed and staffed extensively by specialists with qualifications in jewellery retailing, valuation & pawnbroking:
Our pricing structure is consistently controlled and adjusted by a team including four NAJ IRV / JVA valuers (including a Fellow and two Members of the IRV, authorities in many forms of jewellery), a JVA Specialist Member, a number of N.A.G. R.J.Dips (including a Greenough Trophy winner) / N.A.J. P.J.Dips and four designated watch specialists, who concentrate on Rolex but also have previous Main Agent experience with Breitling, Omega and other brands. From their professional experience and the sales of millions of pounds of jewellery and watches that they oversee every year, this team has a sound grasp of what your items are worth on the open market and thus how much can responsibly be lent against them.
Our teams undergo constant training. Within ten months of its launch, thirty diligent pawnbrokers working at the three Miltons companies had obtained the NPA’s Certificate in Pawnbroking Excellence, an award-winning, comprehensive course / series of examinations designed to increase expertise in Consumer Credit matters. The UK’s very first CPE was awarded to our Managing Director, Haywood Milton in April 2015 – and it was “with distinction,” a rare accolade denoting an overall mark in excess of 90% (click here to view). By October 2015, half of those few UK pawnbrokers who had passed the NPA exams with Distinction worked at a Miltons company!
WANT TO BORROW A LARGE AMOUNT? We provide pawnbroking loans to all sorts of people: individuals, professionals and small / medium size business owners. With our resident specialists, sliding scale of charges (see below) and private client suites available without prior appointment, we don’t believe any pawnbroker in the North West is better placed to provide loans over £5,000 than we are! Ask for the personal attention of a store manager or, for sums in excess of five figures, you may wish to speak with a Director. We aim to treat every customer personally, professionally and fairly; only by looking after you can we remain in business for another hundred years. Larger loans will be paid out by bank transfer and must be repaid by bank transfer or debit card. Bank transfers must be from / to a bank account in your name unless we give express permission otherwise.
For details of your nearest miltons family pawnbroker, click here.
IDENTIFICATION New customers wishing to sell or pawn goods will now be asked for at least TWO forms of identification, to prove who they are, where they live and (if appropriate) their age. To see our in-store notice that provides examples of acceptable identification, click here. Returning customers who have not moved address may not need so much identification, but please call the relevant shop first to check. Images of customers will be recorded and retained (we are registered as Data Controllers with the ICO).
REPRESENTATIVE EXAMPLE :
Borrow £250 today… come back after four weeks and reclaim your jewellery for just £271.23
Total cost of credit in this example is £21.23
Interest rate 101.88% per annum (fixed) equivalent to 8.49% per month. REPRESENTATIVE 122.5 % APR
You may like to compare the above with how much your bank charges if you are overdrawn for the same period, or if you make a late payment on your credit card.
A loan like our example is charged at 8.49% per month, though we offer different rates for different sizes of loan. The rates are displayed opposite and in-store. These charges are the key factor in finding out how much interest you will pay, so if you’re thinking of using any other pawnbroker, check what they’ll be charging you. If they don’t show their charges as clearly as this, ask yourself why they don’t !
Although your agreement is for seven months, our flexible contracts mean you can redeem / reduce your pledge at any time and even make part payments. In all instances, for the purposes of calculating the interest accrued, PART of a contract month shall be treated as a whole contract month. In practice, however, because we adhere to the early settlement regulations we will sometimes ask you for less than this if you return during the initial term of your contract. A sample contract may be viewed below.
| Loan | Interest per month / part of month |
APR |
|---|---|---|
| £10,250 and over | 4.79 % | 64.2 % |
| £7,500 – £10,249 | 5.29 % | 71.6 % |
| £5,500 – £7,499 | 6.19 % | 85.4 % |
| £3,100 – £5,499 | 6.89 % | 96.4 % |
| £2,100 – £3,099 | 7.39 % | 104.4 % |
| £1,000 – £2,099 | 7.99 % | 114.2 % |
| £10 – £999 | 8.49 % | 122.5 % |
More than one item? If you pawn more than one item on a single loan agreement you will not be able to redeem them separately. We advise pawning multiple items individually over two or more separate contracts, so that they may also be redeemed separately if this is desired. However, if this is not a concern and you wish to pawn multiple items under one loan agreement, the single, larger loan may incur a slightly lower rate of interest than multiple, smaller loans.
YOU should keep your goods insured while in pawn. In the unlikely event of loss we do have a limited compensation plan in place that is based on the value of your loan, but your goods will not be insured by us while they are in pawn. For details of our compensation plan, click here
At Miltons we want to help our customers. We are delighted to say that MOST pledges at Miltons are reclaimed, but pledgors must be aware that failure to repay the loan and interest will ultimately result in such security being sold. This is the last thing we or anyone wants to happen. If you have any worries about redeeming your jewellery, please call for our advice / support. Many clients are reassured, however, that a pawnbroking loan has much less potential for harm than some other forms of borrowing. If we do have to sell your property, there will normally be nothing else for you to repay, even if there is a shortfall. With a pawnbroking loan, you cannot get into a spiral of compounding debt as you might with “payday” or some other loans.
If we do HAVE to sell an unredeemed pledge we will always try to realise the highest price possible for you, which in over 99% of cases means selling it by private treaty. We are allowed to deduct our reasonable “costs of sale” from the proceeds and in these circumstances we subsidise as necessary and cap the costs of sale at 24% of the price realised. Unlike most pawnbrokers we have for many years published a detailed notice in-store explaining such costs of sale, which can be read even before a pawn agreement is first completed. A copy of the current notice may be seen by clicking here.
Sales of unredeemed pledges often generate a “surplus” amount which is repayable to the pledgor. We write to confirm when a pledge has sold and set out the sums applicable; we also advertise here how clients from perhaps the last ten years may find out for FREE if there is a surplus still payable to them. In the five years to the end of March 2022, the four shops comprising Miltons (Liverpool) Ltd, M.S.Milton Ltd and S.S.Milton Ltd together generated over £90,000 in surplus amounts repayable to pawnbroking customers whose items had sold.
All three Milton companies are members of the National Pawnbrokers Association. In fact, among our directors are a currently-serving Council Member and a former President!
The NPA maintains a helpful website, www.thenpa.com The NPA “Find a Pawnbroker” leaflet, which can be seen if you click here, contains a useful overview of the pawnbroking process.
In 2014 the NPA also produced a detailed leaflet looking in depth at the UK pawnbroking market. Some parts of it are now out of date or incorrect but it provides an interesting read nonetheless : click here to read it.
Miltons (Liverpool) Ltd, M.S.Milton Ltd and S.S.Milton Ltd are all separately Authorised and Regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. This authorisation and regulation is limited to the provision of consumer credit related activities and excludes all other services offered by the companies described above. For details of all three companies, click on our FAQ
All three companies have also signed up to a special agreement under a scheme approved by the then-Business Secretary, the Rt. Hon. Vince Cable MP. This makes Miltons (Liverpool) Ltd, M.S.Milton Ltd and S.S.Milton Ltd all part of the Trading Standards Primary Authority scheme agreed between the NPA and Surrey County Council Trading Standards.
We are also signed up to the voluntary, market-leading Gold Standard for buying in jewellery. This optional scheme was created by a number of leading trade bodies in order to help keep criminal activity out of reputable businesses. It is endorsed by the following :
Miltons also helped found the Safergems Watch Register which works with all the UK’s police forces. Indeed, our Director takes the credit for the scheme’s logo, below! From 2016 the Safergems Watch Register was administered by specialist checking service Checkmend, to provide even greater funding, credibility and effectiveness.
From Spring 2018 we began using the Art Loss Register‘s separate Watch Register :
CUSTOMER RESOURCES
> Click to view our in-store notice of RATES, CHARGES & more
> Click to view our in-store notice with examples of ACCEPTABLE IDENTIFICATION
> Click to view SAMPLES of PRE-CONTRACT INFORMATION and PAWN CONTRACT Front / Back
> Click to view Advice on making PART PAYMENT(S) on a pledge contract
> Click to view RENEWALS – thinking of extending your loan ?
> Click to view HOW WE SELL an unredeemed pledge (includes COSTS OF SALE)
> Click to view / download our DEBT ADVICE leaflet
> Click here to view our PRIVACY POLICY (revised for GDPR, 2018)
> Click to view our “Introduction to TREATING CUSTOMERS FAIRLY” document
ARE YOU STRUGGLING – with finances, mental health or in any other way?
LET US KNOW and we will try to help. There is a link to an advice leaflet above.
You may also like to click here
HAPPY…or NOT HAPPY? We want to hear about it :
We value all feedback, even if submitted anonymously, regarding our service in store, on the telephone or through this website. Simply email us on info@miltonsjewellers.com or contact us using any of the other methods listed on our Contact us page. A senior member of the team will respond where appropriate, if you give us your own contact details.
Our business depends on looking after you, our clients. We hope you’ll never need it but we do have a comprehensive Complaints Policy. The Complaints Procedure is published both here and in-store. It is very satisfying to confirm that complaints are almost unheard of at the Miltons companies and negligible even across the wider pawnbroking industry.
Please click here for more information on our Complaints and Feedback page and the Financial Ombudsman Service (www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk).
> Click to view / download our COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE
> Click to view / download a COMPLAINTS FORM
We would always seek to look after you professionally, fairly and with courtesy, just as you should expect. These two thankyou cards very much sum up the experience we hope to provide:
MEDIA We’re always happy to talk about proper pawnbroking, a most fascinating industry. Both our clients and the jewellery / watches that they bring to us can be quite varied, to say the least. While we won’t engage in the unnecessary fiction that is the modern “TV pawnbroker” (despite being asked several times), we have always been willing to engage in proper discussion and coverage of our trade. Through the years we have appeared on TV programmes like the BBC’s “Breakfast Time” and “The One Show,” ITV’s “Granada Reports,” Channel 4’s “Big Breakfast,” BBC Radio’s “Jeremy Vine” & “Victoria Derbyshire” shows and many more. Here is an example from Liverpool’s Radio City (96.7) : the Pete Price Show from 11th October 2010 :
Click below to hear radio interview from 11th October 2010 :