Pawn and Secondhand Dealer Laws by State: Overview

Why gold buyers ask for your ID

Precious-metals resale sits inside a legal framework that predates the modern industry by more than a century. Anti-fencing statutes, first enacted in the 1800s to disrupt trade in stolen livestock and jewelry, became the template for the “secondhand dealer” laws that now govern coin shops, jewelers who buy back scrap, “we buy gold” storefronts, and mobile buyers at hotel ballroom events.

Three federal and state rationales explain the paperwork. First, law enforcement uses transaction reports to match sold items against stolen-property databases. A ring melted the day after a burglary is unrecoverable. A ring held for 15 or 30 days can be identified, seized, and returned. Second, cash sales above $10,000 trigger federal reporting under the Bank Secrecy Act, enforced by the IRS through Form 8300, which must be filed within 15 days of the transaction. Third, most states impose recordkeeping to deter money laundering and to build a paper trail if a dealer’s practices later come under scrutiny by a state attorney general or the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

The ID request is therefore not the store making things awkward. It is the store meeting a statutory obligation. Refusing to show ID at a licensed dealer means the store legally cannot buy from you. That is the design.

The four state tiers, at a glance

The 50 states fall roughly into four groups when you compare the actual statute books. The tier a state sits in shapes how the transaction feels: how much paperwork, how long before the item leaves the counter, and how visible the reporting is to you as the seller.

The tiering is descriptive, not defensive. A shop in a Tier 1 state that skips the paperwork is breaking state law and can lose its license. A shop in a Tier 4 county that keeps meticulous records is exceeding what the state requires but protecting itself from federal exposure. As a seller, the tier tells you what to expect, not what is legally guaranteed.

Verified state examples

The tier map is easier to trust when you can read the underlying statutes. These five examples show how the rules differ in practice.

California: 7-day hold, daily CAPSS reporting, fingerprint required

California Business and Professions Code §§ 21625 through 21647 governs secondhand dealers, including precious-metal buyers. Under § 21628, dealers must transmit acquisition reports to the California Pawn and Secondhand Dealer System (CAPSS) daily or no later than the next business day. The seller’s ID (US passport, state driver’s license, government ID, or foreign passport with address documentation) is recorded, along with a legible fingerprint. § 21636.1 imposes a 7-day retention period from the date the CAPSS report is transmitted; after five days elapse, resale is permitted only if the dealer records buyer contact information and retains sale records for 21 days. Firearms carry a separate 30-day hold under § 21636.

Florida: 30-day hold on precious metals, 24-hour reporting

Florida Statutes Chapter 538, Part I governs secondhand dealers. § 538.06 imposes a 30-calendar-day hold on precious metals, gemstones, jewelry, antiques, and art (the general category hold is 15 days). § 538.04 requires the seller to present a government-issued photographic ID (driver’s license or military ID), and the dealer records the ID type, issuing agency, and number. Transaction records must reach law enforcement within 24 hours of the acquisition. Florida is one of the states where a thumbprint of the seller is captured at the counter under § 538.04(1)(g).

Washington: 30-day retention for precious-metal dealers

Washington’s Chapter 19.60 RCW covers pawnbrokers and secondhand dealers, with parallel provisions for precious-metal dealers. RCW 19.60.057 requires that precious-metal property remain on the dealer’s premises for 30 days after receipt. RCW 19.60.020 requires either a valid driver’s license (or state ID) or two forms of government-issued identification, with at least one carrying a current photograph. The dealer records the seller’s name, date of birth, sex, height, weight, race, address, and phone number, along with a full description of the item. Records are retained and available for law enforcement inspection for three years.

Texas: 48-hour reporting, driver’s license number recorded

Texas Occupations Code Chapter 1956, Subchapter B, governs “crafted precious-metal dealers.” Under § 1956.062(c), the dealer records the seller’s driver’s license number or Department of Public Safety personal identification certificate number on physical presentation of the document. Under § 1956.062(d), the dealer must mail or deliver a copy of the transaction list to the municipal police chief (or county sheriff, if the transaction occurs outside a municipality with its own police department) within 48 hours. Transaction reports are retained until the third anniversary of the filing date under § 1956.063.

New York: 5-day no-alteration rule for junk dealers

New York’s older junk-dealer framework, codified at General Business Law § 63, requires each purchase to be kept separately, unmelted, uncut, undestroyed, for five days after acquisition, with a tag recording the seller’s name and residence, the purchase date, hour, place, and weight. New York City layers a separate secondhand-dealer license issued by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection under Title 20 of the NYC Administrative Code, with additional reporting through the NYPD’s electronic system. A cash-for-gold storefront in Manhattan therefore complies with two overlapping regimes.

Holding periods before melting: side-by-side

The holding period is the single rule sellers ask about most often, because it determines when an item is unrecoverable. If a piece is stolen and reported quickly, a longer hold gives police time to intercept it before the shop melts scrap into bars or ships jewelry to a refiner.

A dealer buying from you cannot legally speed up the hold to accommodate a rush shipment to a refiner. If a store offers a higher price “if we can melt it today,” that offer is either the store waiving state law or the state is Tier 4 with no mandated hold. Either way, ask which statute the shop believes controls the transaction. A licensed operator can name it.

Police reporting: what the dealer actually sends

The transaction report varies by state, but the fields are broadly similar. A typical electronic filing sent to a state secondhand-goods database or a municipal police portal includes:

• Date, time, and location of the transaction
• Seller’s full legal name, address, date of birth, and physical description
• Type and number of the identification presented, and the issuing agency
• Fingerprint or thumbprint of the seller, in states that require it
• Full item description: category (coin, bar, jewelry), weight, karat, condition, any hallmarks, serial numbers, engravings, and photographs where the state requires them
• Price paid to the seller
• Employee name or badge number who conducted the transaction

The two most common data platforms are LeadsOnline, used by more than 4,000 local law enforcement agencies across the country, and state-specific systems such as CAPSS in California. In several states the electronic feed satisfies the statutory delivery requirement, and no paper copy is mailed. In others, an electronic feed is optional and the shop mails or drops off a paper copy.

Because these systems are queried by police against stolen-property reports, the seller who legitimately owns the piece has nothing to fear from the transmission. The record is protective in both directions: it proves the transaction happened, at that time, at that price, with an identified seller who confirmed the goods were theirs to sell.

Licensing: who must be licensed, and by whom

Every state we surveyed requires either a state-level license, a local license, or both, to operate as a secondhand dealer or precious-metal buyer. The licensing authority varies:

• State department (banking, revenue, or consumer affairs). Washington’s Department of Financial Institutions, Florida’s Department of Revenue, and Georgia’s Secretary of State are examples. Fees typically run from $200 to $500 per year, with a criminal-history background check on principals.
• Local police or sheriff. California’s chief of police or sheriff issues the secondhand-dealer license (Bus. & Prof. Code § 21641), after Department of Justice review of the applicant’s criminal history. Applicants convicted of receiving or attempting to receive stolen property are disqualified.
• Municipal consumer-protection agency. New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection issues secondhand-dealer licenses independently of any statewide credential.
• Combination. Many Tier 1 and Tier 2 states require both a state credential and a local business license, with the state law setting the recordkeeping and reporting minimum and the municipality adding zoning, signage, and hours-of-operation rules.

A licensed shop displays its credential in a visible place at the register, or can produce it on request. Business owners running gold, jewelry, coin, or pawn operations can also list their shop, license number, and public profile on the Goldiew directory, which many state-licensed operators use to establish an independently verifiable web footprint (a practical reference when consumers or partners want a second signal beyond a state license lookup). If you cannot find a license or a public profile, the safest move is to ask the state’s consumer-protection division whether the shop is registered before you sell anything of value.

What sellers should expect at the counter

A first-time seller often finds the process more formal than the setting suggests. Whether the storefront is a mall jeweler, a coin shop, or a “we buy gold” pop-up, the transaction usually follows the same sequence in any Tier 1 or Tier 2 state:

1. ID check and photocopy or scan. The dealer records the ID type, issuing agency, and number, and in most states retains a copy or scan.
2. Item weigh-in and evaluation. Weight, karat, and any hallmarks are recorded in front of you, typically on a calibrated jeweler’s scale.
3. Offer. The dealer states an offer based on live spot price, refining loss, overhead, and margin. In most states you have the right to refuse and walk away without penalty.
4. Slip and thumbprint. If you accept, you sign a transaction slip that mirrors the report the dealer will file. In fingerprint-required states, a thumbprint is captured.
5. Payment. Some states cap cash payments at low thresholds and require check or bank transfer for larger transactions. Cash payments above $10,000 trigger federal Form 8300 reporting to the IRS.
6. Report and hold. The dealer files the transaction report on the state’s timeline and holds the item unaltered for the statutory period before it can be melted, reset, or resold.

If any step is skipped, the shop is either operating outside statute or you are in a Tier 4 jurisdiction where the state does not require it. That is not automatically a red flag, but it is worth understanding before you close a transaction. A good exercise: ask the dealer which state statute or municipal code governs the sale. A compliant operator can name it in one sentence.

Federal overlay: Form 8300 and money-laundering rules

State law sets the identification, holding, and reporting rules. Federal law adds an anti-money-laundering floor that applies to every state.

The most visible federal rule is IRS Form 8300, which requires any trade or business receiving more than $10,000 in cash in one transaction (or in related transactions) to file within 15 days. “Cash” for Form 8300 purposes includes US and foreign currency and, in some cases, cashier’s checks, money orders, and traveler’s checks under $10,000 that aggregate over the threshold. A precious-metals dealer paying $12,000 in bills for a batch of silver bars files a Form 8300 within 15 days.

Separately, precious-metal dealers meeting the $50,000-per-year threshold for purchases or sales in certain covered products fall under FinCEN’s “dealers in precious metals, stones, or jewels” (DPMSJ) rule at 31 CFR § 1027, which requires an anti-money-laundering program with written procedures, employee training, and independent testing. The DPMSJ rule does not require Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs), but the same firm’s cash intake still counts toward Form 8300 obligations.

For sellers, the federal layer explains why some larger transactions are paid by check even when you would rather have cash: the dealer is managing its own reporting exposure, not restricting your access to money.

Common misconceptions

Three ideas circulate widely and are worth correcting.

“If I sell under $10,000, no one reports anything.” Not accurate. The $10,000 threshold applies to the federal Form 8300 cash rule. State secondhand-dealer statutes require reporting on essentially every transaction, regardless of amount. A $250 wedding ring sold in California is still logged in CAPSS the next business day.

“Structuring my sale into small pieces avoids reporting.” Structuring, meaning breaking a transaction into smaller pieces to avoid reporting thresholds, is a federal crime under 31 U.S.C. § 5324. Dealers train staff to spot patterns and file Form 8300 on “related transactions” even below $10,000 each. Attempting to structure to evade reporting exposes both the seller and the buyer to criminal liability.

“A cash-for-gold storefront has no legal obligations.” Every state we reviewed regulates cash-for-gold storefronts under the same secondhand-dealer or precious-metal-dealer framework as coin shops and jewelers. Municipal rules often add hours-of-operation limits and signage requirements. A pop-up buyer in a hotel ballroom is usually required to hold a state or local license for that jurisdiction, and enforcement actions against unlicensed hotel-event buyers appear periodically in state attorney general press releases.

Bottom line

The paperwork at a gold buyer’s counter is not the shop being cautious. It is the shop meeting statutory obligations that have existed in some form for more than a century and now include daily electronic feeds to state and municipal police databases. Sellers who understand the framework skip the surprise and negotiate from a stronger position: they know the transaction is being recorded, they know the item cannot be melted for a week to a month, and they know that a shop refusing to explain which statute governs the deal is a shop worth walking away from.