Pawn shop activities are great indicators of how bad the economy is. Many people pawn their belongings whenever they fall in hard times, before they file for bankruptcy protection.

The harder the times, the more people visiting the pawn shops to pawn whatever valuable items they have to try to get by and pay bills. They don’t want to file for bankruptcy if they can help it.

However, a lot of the time, things do not get better and they end up having to file for bankruptcy protection later on.