My father ran a Pawn Shop for over 25 years, very clean and tidy as he's compulsive in that sort of thing. My very first job as a kid was accually disassembling and cleaning firearms for the shop before they went out for sale. However, a good amount of other pawn shops him and I have ever been to, throughout several states over the years, were very unkempt and somewhat on the dirty/mangy side. And of course everything was overpriced in a lot of them, and certainly very rare to see super valuable items (especially since the internet became mainstream, kinda like finding good deals at flee-markets these days).
Though, my dad's goal wasn't significant profit, his goal was to simply help people in need. Not many people like that these days. He's always been a huge inspiration to me and I couldn't be prouder to be his son...On the funny side though, I can't even walk around in public with him without being delayed countless times by people that know and see him to strike up a conversation for who knows how long, since a ridiculous amount of people know and like him, haha.
But I agree, pawn shops aren't really like that for the largest part, including ones we went into in Vegas some years back.
..Except the low-balling part, sadly. Sure profit is the whole point of a business, but dad and I'm sure many others didn't believe in screwing people over like they 'depict' on TV. So I agree completely with kpax, those kind of shows depict a false reality, not true reality.
-Carson