Pop Goes The Weasel

I only use the title of this blog based on some knowledge I gained recently.  It has to do with the pawn brokering business whose symbol looks something like this…

The son and I spent a little time at my favorite pawn shop today and I did see one of these symbols in the window as we entered.  I almost always devote my purchases there to music CDs and movie DVDs and today was no different.  I picked up the following CDs for $0.50 each…

• Foreigner – Records (An older, best of album)
• Ozzy Osborn – No More Tears

I am all about the 80s music (hence the Foreigner CD) but I am not really an Ozzy fan.  I can only justify my purchase in that I like the song “No More Tears” and it was only $0.50 (for Pete’s sake).  I have gone over all their CDs so often that I can tell which ones are new compared to the ones that have been there for years so once I nabbed these up I focused more on DVDs…

• Herbie Fully Loaded
• Max Keeble’s Big Movie
• Air Buddies
• Apocalypto
• Walk The Line
• Tommy Boy (2 DVD Holy Schnike Edition)
• Black Sheep

The first (3) were DVD’s that the son picked out (there is sort of a children’s section for movies).  The middle (2) were my choices and the last (2) were movies that the wife likes (though I do enjoy Chris Farley and David Spade, especially in Tommy Boy).  Most of the time the son and I were looking over the seemingly 1,000’s of DVDs there was a lady there who was trying to determine if several rings in the display case might indeed have been hers.  From what I could overhear, there was a divorce in the past and her ex-husband may have pawned them here.  If her story wasn’t so sad it would have been funny.  She was giving a little more detail than was needed simply to put some money down on these rings so they could not be purchased by someone else.  She did go on quite a bit on how much she (they) paid for them years ago (which I would think would be a mistake since they were selling for much less than that now).  Anyway, people like her and her ex-husband are why pawn shops are in business (and thereby provide me with cheap CDs and DVDs) so I guess I should cut her some slack.

Back to the title of the blog, according to this page…

The nursery rhyme "Pop Goes The Weasel" refers to pawning. A weasel is a shoemaker’s tool and to "pop" is to pawn. "That’s the way the money goes...Pop goes the weasel."

I had never heard of this but I know there are stories behind most nursery rhymes so it does not shock me.  The 3 ball symbol (at the first part of this blog), this same web site says…

During the Middle Ages, certain usury laws imposed by the Church prohibited the charging of interest on loans, thus limiting pawnbroking to people who had religious beliefs outside of the Church. Out of economic necessity, and because of problems with the banking system, pawnshops made a resurgence in later years. The House of Lombard operated pawnshops throughout Europe. Legend contends that they even counted royalty, such as King Edward III of England, among their clientele during the 14th century. The symbol of the Lombards’ operations was the three gold balls that still remain the trademark.

I had to figure the church was mixed up in this somehow.  Anyway, I spent < $25 and picked up some good stuff and the kids even have some new movies to watch.

Jon