A pawnshop is the shop itself — the place a pawnbroker works. You walk in with something valuable, or you walk in to buy something someone else never collected. The window is often full of watches, gold, cameras, tools, and guitars. In American English this is the everyday word; people say they went to the pawnshop. In British English you still hear pawnbroker's (the pawnbroker's shop) a lot, though pawnshop is understood and is growing. Television made American pawnshops famous, which makes the word feel more US than it strictly is. The feeling of the place is mixed: some people go there in trouble, some go there to hunt for a cheap second-hand find. Same business as a Taiwan 當鋪, even if the shop signs look different.

當鋪