Joliet, IL Business Licensing & Operations: Pawnbrokers (2026)

Article V of Chapter 18 defines a pawnbroker as anyone engaged in receiving property in pledge or as security for money or anything else advanced to the pledgor (§ 18-99). 00 (§ 18-100, § 18-20); applications otherwise follow the general licensing procedure in § 18-1 et seq. 00 bond with sufficient sureties, conditioned on performance of the business's legal obligations and on indemnifying the city for any loss from how the business is run (§ 18-101). Pawnbrokers must keep a written book record of every item pawned or pledged, including the pledgor's name and residence, the item's description, and its serial or factory number where available, and must report all items pledged during the previous business day to the chief of police on the first regular business day of each week (§ 18-102).

Section 18-103 sets the core consumer protections: a pawnbroker cannot refuse to return a pawned article once the pledgor tenders repayment, cannot charge interest above 3% per month, cannot return a pledge until 24 hours after it has been reported to the police chief, and cannot sell a pledged article until a full year after the pledgor defaults on interest payments, unless the pledgor gives written consent to an earlier sale after the default occurs. Section 18-104 bars pawnbrokers from exchanging or receiving any pledge from a minor and from lending money or anything of value to a minor.

Chapter 17's junk-and-secondhand-dealer rules cross-reference this article by separately barring junk and secondhand dealers from taking pledges or pawns at all (§ 17-11), keeping pawnbroking a distinct, more heavily bonded license category.