As gold prices soar and a recession squeezes wallets, Mike Criscio is seeing a rush of gold at his pawn shop door.
Criscio (at left in photo, with son Jason) got approval this week to expand his jewelry-selling business to Fair Haven, where he owns a check-cashing store on Grand Avenue.
Criscio, an easy-going man with a football player’s build, is perhaps better known as the manager of 20 boxers, including of New Haven’s hometown star, light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson. When he’s not traveling on boxing business, he runs a couple of pawn shops, one in West Haven and one on New Haven’s Howe Street. He also runs a check-cashing store at 184 Grand Ave.
The rocketing price of gold — now selling at $881 an ounce, up from $342 just five years ago — is pouring business into his Howe Street locale, Criscio said, speaking in a basement hallway of the Hall of Records. He showed up there Tuesday night, with two kids in tow from a baseball game, to seek permission from the city zoning board to start selling precious metal out of his Fair Haven store.
After stumbling over a puzzling sign, the board granted him his request.
The Gold Rush
Criscio’s store at 184 Grand, adjacent to the C‑Town supermarket and a stone’s throw from the Fair Haven Middle School, offers a range of services including P.O. Boxes, money wiring and check-cashing. It’s a small, simple space on Fair Haven’s main corridor. On a recent afternoon, a woman in flip flops stood by the bullet-proof glass, exchanging a check for $581 in cash.
Criscio, who grew up in New Haven, recounted how he came to own his businesses. He arrived there after getting bounced around in the justice system. First he spent a couple years as a Yale cop. Then he wanted to work for the state, so he landed a stint as a corrections officer at the Whalley Avenue Jail.
The work went well until one day in 1992, when he was alone with one warden, and all hell broke loose. What began as prisoners’ taunts escalated to a riot, he said: “I got hit with chairs, tables.” He got pretty banged up. “I couldn’t go back to work.”
His buddy suggested a new line of work. He got into check-cashing, and boom — thus was born M & M, which he runs with his father, Michael Criscio Sr. These days, his father and mother do most of the work, as Mike junior is busy on the boxing circuit.
Business is running high at the M & M Pawn Shop these days, Criscio Jr. said. Transactions have doubled, from 30,000 to 60,000 per year, as a wider range of people socked by recession-era woes show up at his door.
“I can’t tell you the amount of people walking in,” said Criscio. A cop who’s behind on his mortgage payments hands him a diamond bracelet. Independent contractors who can’t pay their employees seek out some relief. Fathers of kids he coaches in baseball show up with small piles of gold.
The pawn shop has been rolling in that precious ore, Criscio said: “We did five times as much gold as we did last year.” The shop resells jewelry, and makes its own, too, including rings and earrings and — “What are those called, with the diamonds down the front?”
“Journey,” piped up his elder son.
“Yeah, Journey.” Criscio wants to open a similar jewelry operation, minus the pawning, in his Fair Haven shop.
A Misleading Sign
“The only thing I want is gold and diamonds,” Criscio told the five members of Board of Zoning Appeals when his case came up. He said he just wanted to deal jewelry.
“No one goes in there for pawns,” he said. “It’s not even big enough for a pawn shop.”
He had some convincing to do, because the sign outside his shop reads “Pawn Shop” in two different places.
“What is confusing is the fact that his business is still called a pawnshop,” read a skeptical City Plan report. Noting that the shop is within 1,500 feet of another pawn shop at 300 Grand Ave., and lacking evidence of gem-dealing credentials, the city recommended denying his application.
Taking the floor, Criscio explained the odd sign choice: He was required to post the name of his LLC at the store, so he put it on the sign outside: “M & M PawnShop and Check Cashing LLC.” He’s run the store there for two or three years. He said the awning, a donation from Western Union, is new, and he didn’t notice the words “Pawn Shop” until the zoning board pointed it out.
A Ring Proposal
Board chair Cathy Weber asked if, hypothetically, she could take in one of her rings and sell it to him. The city had identified that question — do you accept second-hand goods? — as key to determining whether the store in question was a pawn shop, thus subject to regulations by city zoning code.
Criscio said yes, he’d take the ring — but not because he’s a pawn shop. He’d accept the ring because he buys second-hand jewels just as any other jewelry dealer would. Whereas a pawn shop takes possessions as a security for loans, the Fair Haven shop would simply deal jewelry. And it wouldn’t accept non-jewelry pawns, such as TVs and bicycles.
Criscio told the board he is indeed certified in selling jewelry.
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” he said. “I sell a lot of diamonds.”
The board, convinced the shop was not indeed doing pawns, decided there was no reason to prevent the man from dealing precious metals out of his check-cashing store.
“I really don’t see why he can’t have it,” said Weber. “He’s certified.”
The board approved his proposal 5 – 0, with one condition — that he erase all the confusion by wiping out large block letters on the awning that labeled the store a “pawn shop.”
