Pocatello, ID Business Licensing & Operations: Secondhand Dealers (2026)

Pocatello City Code Section 5.36.010 declares that loaning or advancing money against the deposit, pledge or bailment of personal property, or against a chattel mortgage or assignment of wages, constitutes a pawnbroker business, and makes it unlawful to operate without first obtaining a pawnbroker's license; even a sign advertising such transactions is prima facie evidence of an unlicensed pawnbroker business. Section 5.36.020 sets the license fee at fifty dollars per year or fraction thereof, and 5.36.030 clarifies that a single qualifying transaction is enough to constitute carrying on the business.

Section 5.36.040 requires every pawnbroker to keep a permanent electronic record, compatible with the city's law enforcement system, of each transaction and the identity of the party involved, verified against a government-issued photo ID, including the transaction date, an assigned store and employee ID number, the customer's name, date of birth, sex, height, weight, race and address, and a complete description of the property, down to serial numbers, jewelry stone details, or a firearm's caliber and barrel length. Section 5.36.050 requires a full report of each day's transactions transmitted to the Pocatello Police Department by noon the following business day.

Section 5.36.060 bars receiving property from anyone intoxicated, under the influence of drugs, or under eighteen, except sports trading cards may still be pawned by minors. Section 5.36.070 requires held property to be retained for thirty days after the loan term expires, except precious metals not in jewelry form, which may be disposed of once the term expires. Sections 5.36.080 and 5.36.090 set a stolen-property hold procedure: a ten-day hold on verbal police notice, escalating to a sixty-day hold on written notice, extendable in further sixty-day increments if the pawnbroker fails to give the required ten-day advance notice before release.

Section 5.36.100 bars employing anyone under eighteen to handle pledges or loans, and 5.36.110 makes the licensee responsible for staff compliance, subject to license revocation.