Greensboro, NC Business Licensing & Operations: Pawnbrokers (2026)

Greensboro's pawnbroker ordinance, City Code Sec. 13-8, sits in Chapter 13's general regulatory article alongside the parallel junk-dealer recordkeeping duty in Sec. 13-7. It applies to every pawnbroker operating in the city and imposes two linked obligations. First, under subsection (a), a pawnbroker must keep a permanent book recording every article deposited with or received as security, including the owner's name and address, a description sufficient to identify the item, and the amount advanced or loaned on it. That book must be available for inspection by the chief of police, or by any other proper city officer, at all reasonable times: there is no advance-notice requirement in the text.

Second, under subsection (b), the pawnbroker must file a daily report with the chief of police, due every day except Sundays and holidays, listing each article deposited or received during the prior day's business, along with the owner's name, sex, color and address, a description of the item, the hour and date it was received, the amount advanced, and the pawn ticket number issued to the owner. The ordinance traces to Code of 1961 § 11-104 and was last amended by Ord. No. 20-163, § 3, adopted December 15, 2020.

2, North Carolina's statute governing administrative search and inspection warrants, which supplies the legal mechanism police use if a pawnbroker resists a records inspection. The section creates a real-time paper trail intended to let Greensboro police cross-check pawned goods against stolen-property reports, functioning much like the identical daily-report duty imposed on junk dealers in the immediately preceding Sec. 13-7.