page_title: History of pawnbroking
section_title: Symbol
hierarchical_section_title: History of pawnbroking / Symbol
context_page_description: Pawnbroking, lending money on portable security, began in ancient history. The practice was widespread in many parts of the world, from ancient Greece to medieval China and medieval Europe.
context_section_description: The pawnbroker's symbol shows three balls suspended from a bar and has been widely used since the mid-18th century. The origins of the symbol are unclear, but it is often attributed to the Medici family of Florence, Italy. The family insignia featured rounded objects, which may have represented gold coins or rocks. According to one legend, a Medici employed by Charles the Great slew a giant using three bags of rocks. Since the Medici family were so successful in the financial, banking, and money-lending industries, other families also adopted the symbol. Throughout the Middle Ages, coats of arms bore three balls, orbs, plates, discs, coins and more as symbols of monetary success.
  Another theory attributes the symbol to the Lombards. Pawn shop banking originated under the name of Lombard banking, and many European towns called the pawn shop the "Lombard". The three golden balls were originally the symbol medieval Lombard merchants hung up in front of their houses.
  A third theory links the symbol to Saint Nicholas of Myra, the patron saint of pawnbrokers. According to legend, he gave a bag of gold to three poor girls to save them from destitution, and these three bags of gold became the three orbs of the symbol.
  It has been conjectured that the golden balls were originally three flat yellow effigies of byzants, or gold coins, laid heraldically upon a sable field, but that they were presently converted into balls the better to attract attention.
  Pawnbrokers (and their detractors) joke that the three balls mean "Two to one, you won't get your stuff back".
  In the late 20th century some pawnbrokers responded to a decline in the industry by removing the traditional symbol.
caption: Symbol of pawnbrokers