Lakewood, WA Business Licensing & Operations: Secondhand Dealers (2026)

LMC 5.12.011 makes any entity doing business in Lakewood as a pawnbroker, secondhand dealer, or secondhand precious metal dealer, as those terms are defined in RCW 19.60.010, subject to Chapter 5.12 and requires a City of Lakewood business license under Chapter 5.02. The chapter is expressly supplemental to, not a substitute for, the state secondhand dealer statute, Chapter 19.60 RCW, and the scrap-metal statute, Chapter 19.290 RCW (LMC 5.12.011(B)). LMC 5.12.013 requires every regulated entity to report as required by both of those RCW chapters, and LMC 5.12.021 and 5.12.023 adopt whole tables of RCW sections by reference into city law, including RCW 19.60.020 (duty to record transaction information), RCW 19.60.040 (report to the chief law enforcement officer), RCW 19.60.050 and .055 (retention of pawned or secondhand property for inspection), and RCW 19.290.030 (metal property and metallic wire transaction requirements), with any reference to "the state" in those sections construed to also mean the City of Lakewood.

Pawnbrokers face an added local cap: LMC 5.12.060 fixes the maximum number of licensed pawnshops in the city at the number operating when the ordinance passed, four, and that ceiling only ever ratchets down, never up, as licenses lapse (LMC 5.12.065). Pawnshop owners must also hold a current federal firearms license and pass criminal-history screening under LMC 5.12.075.