The same guy has been behind this counter for forty years.

Forty years of doing it the same way.

Rob Van Gronigen has run the Hock Shoppe on East Belmont for four decades — long enough that customers who hocked a guitar in the nineties now bring their kids in to buy one.

That’s the whole model, really. There’s no “let me call in an expert” here, because Rob and his staff are the experts — on tools, on gold, on guitars, on what a used console is actually worth this month. You get a straight answer and a fair number, and if you don’t like it, you walk out with your stuff and no hard feelings.

It also means the people valuing your item are the people who work here — not a script, not a quota, not a corporate pricing sheet handed down from head office.