Sandy, UT Business Licensing & Operations: Secondhand Dealers (2026)

Section 15-7-1 defines a secondhand merchandise dealer as an owner or operator of a business that deals in the purchase, exchange, or sale of used or secondhand merchandise or personal property and does not function as a pawnbroker. The same definitions section lists a long set of exemptions from that definition: antique shop owners, garage sales, yard sales and estate sales, sale or receipt of secondhand books, magazines, or postcards, secondhand clothing and shoes, donated goods sold by nonprofit, religious, charitable, or school-sponsored organizations, retail trade-ins for new merchandise, and personal online sales of one's own property where no local license is otherwise required.

Section 15-7-2 makes it unlawful to carry on business as a secondhand merchandise dealer, along with junk dealer, junk collector, and the other regulated occupations, without a license, requiring a separate license for each location and each dealer, and requiring notice to the Sandy City Business Department within 30 days of any change to licensing information. Section 15-7-3 requires a Sandy Police Department background investigation before an individual applicant may be authorized to conduct business, and Section 15-7-4 confines the license to a fixed permanent business location, barring relocation without a new separate license and barring operation from a motel, hotel room, home occupation, or temporary site.

Dealers must comply with the Pawnshop and Secondhand Merchandise Transaction Information Act, Utah Code Title 13 Chapter 32a, under Section 15-7-6, and may submit digital photographs of purchased items to the Sandy Police Department. Fees under Section 15-7-5 are set by Council resolution, with a partial or full waiver of any disproportionate fee available to dealers that maintain the state-required transaction registers and transmit them to the state's central database.