Summit County, OH Business Licensing & Operations: Secondhand Dealers (2026)

Under Sec. 02, no person, partnership or corporation may engage in the regular business of purchasing, selling, exchanging or receiving secondhand items, or in dealing secondhand precious stones or gold, silver or platinum articles, without first being licensed by the Office of Consumer Affairs. Applicants file in writing under Sec. 03, list every owner and employee, supply references from at least two Summit County residents, and are barred for five years after a felony conviction involving fraud, theft or receiving stolen property; the Office holds the application at least thirty days to check backgrounds.

Before a license issues, Sec. 04 requires the Summit County Division of Weights and Measures to inspect and certify every scale and weighing device at the business location, and that certification is location-specific and non-transferable. The license fee is twenty-five dollars under Sec. 05, expires every December 31 regardless of issue date, and must be conspicuously displayed under Sec. 07; renewal under Sec. 06 costs another twenty-five dollars. Licensees must report any change of ownership within five days (Sec. 08) and keep a bound, consecutively numbered record book showing each seller's name, address, physical description and driver's license or state ID number (Sec.

10), plus daily purchase report cards mailed to the Office of Consumer Affairs by noon the next weekday, hand-delivered instead for a new licensee's first forty-five days (Sec. 11). Every acquired article must be tagged with a numbered tag matching the record book (Sec. 12), and goods cannot be disassembled, altered or moved out of the county for at least ten days after acquisition (Sec. 13). Sec. m. Advertising must include the license number (Sec. 15). Sec. 16 exempts furniture dealers, secondhand auto dealers, coin dealers, licensed pawnbrokers, government and sheriff's sales, and bankruptcy receiver sales, and Sec. 17 makes the chapter inapplicable inside any municipality or township that has its own secondhand dealer regulation.