Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1895 — Pawnbrokers’ Signs. [ARTICLE]

Pawnbrokers’ Signs.

The sign of “the three balls” adopted by pawnbrokers is borrowed from that of the Lombards, or Italian bankers, who first opened loan establishments in England, and who gave the name of Lombard street to the locality where they resided. The most celebrated of the Lombard merchants were the Medici, afterwards princes of Florence, and their arms were three pills, gilded of course. About the worst use you can make of a man is to put him in charge of a strawberry festival to raise money for a church.