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I've heard employees at some chains have a good enough discount that they can buy stuff then sell it to a used CD store or something for a very slight profit.
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There may be some truth to this, but it can't happen much. I was a retail manager for a long time (over a decade) and in a "merchant association" situation where I interacted with managers of other chains. This sort of thing came up, and the max discount I ever heard of at any chain was 40% during a 3-day period at the holidays, as a "bonus". Pawn shops as a rule are paying less than that mark so they can sell for at or above that mark (i.e., am item street priced at $20 would be bought by an employee for $12-$14; pawn shop would want to buy it at $10 or even $5 so they can sell it at $15). Those are just some sample numbers, and I'm obviously not in-the-know about every pawn shop's situation or every chain's discount policy. But I find it hard to believe this would be profitable very often. No, if it came from a store employee to that pawn shop, it is probably a result of internal theft.
As far as the taking of names-addresses-id #'s when you sell to a pawn shop: a few years ago Memphis police raided about a half dozen shops that sold used CD's or Videogames on my end of town. Turns out they weren't doing a good job of following the rules on that. One of the places I frequented got shut down completely and their inventory confiscated...they were in the same parking lot as a Target, and it turns out a lot of their stock had "walked across the parking lot" if you get my drift. In fact, it was Target's management who had gotten the investigation rolling. Two other places had about half their inventory confiscated, but they paid fines and returned to business. Everyone who stayed open toughened up their rules quite a bit. Also, in many of these types of stores, video cameras got pointed right at the counterspace where these transactions happened, so that sellers could be more easily identified.
For a long time in Memphis, after these raids, I felt confident that anything I bought used was a legit item and not "hot". That was years ago now, though, and I now feel that they've slacked off from this level of toughness due to complacency. I rarely buy a used item anymore, and one of the reasons for that has to do with this. The other is because it is just so darn easy to find deals on most day-to-day stuff. And if I'm looking for something rare, I don't depend on lucking into finding it at a shop like this; I head to eBay or use some other organized method of hunting it down.
Chuck said it best: "It all comes down to an individual moral judgement... you make the call."
