Anybody want to go into the pawnbroker's business?

It seems not.

There was a time when there were more than 40 pawnshops in Pittsburgh but now you can count them on one hand. Pitt Loan on the North Side, around since 1937, intends to call it quits by the end of the year.

A sign in the shop window announced "Going Out of Business" sale. I walked in from the rain on East Ohio Street yesterday morning and asked if there might be an umbrella I could buy. There wasn't, but Sanford "Sandy'' Shapiro, 68, behind the counter and his wife, Tobie, in front of the counter, warily agreed to let me share this piece of the city's history, though Mr. Shapiro says he'd been burned by media reports before.

The shop always has been in the Shapiro family. Sandy's uncle, Meyer Shapiro, launched it and his son, Robert, later took over. Sandy began working with his cousin 35 years ago and, when Robert died roughly a quarter-century ago, the shop became Sandy's alone.

Working 9-to-5 six days a week is not an enticing prospect to many these days, and in this age of debit cards, teenagers with credit cards, subprime loans, rent-to-own stores and check-cashing counters, there are many options other than the local pawnshop.

"If you need money nowadays, you can go just about anywhere to get a loan,'' Mr. Shapiro said. "Nobody in their right mind would go into this business fresh.''

The pawnshop's signature offer -- "a quick loan without any hassle'' -- actually ended at his establishment at the close of last year. No longer can a customer bring in, say, his teenaged son's drum set and hock it for money that can be paid back at 3 percent a month. Pitt Loan is no longer loaning; it is only buying and selling as the Shapiros look forward to retirement and, perhaps, a winter retreat in south Florida near their son, Scott.

But the shop, which stretches across two storefronts, still has a layaway plan and remains a treasure-hunter's place to dally. There are guitars by the dozens, along with amplifiers, binoculars, bongos, clarinets, congas, guns. harmonicas, jewelry, keyboards, knives, mandolins, power tools, saxophones, snare drums, tambourines, trumpets and watches.

Bob Tovcimak, 48, of Millvale regularly cashes his paycheck at Pitt Loan and then likes to spend a portion. Mr. Tovcimak bought his first trumpet there. His son, Bobby, sat on it and squashed it a long time ago, but that's not the point.

Mr. Tovcimak has bought everything from TVs to sunglasses, from VCRs to headphones, and he said I could quote him "as long as you talk good about these people.''

A pawnshop is, of course, a place that sparks the imagination. Every item invites you to supply a back story. Look down at a jewelry display and maybe you think: A couple gets engaged. One of them breaks it off. The ring is hocked and the ready cash eases some of the pain, while the ring awaits some stranger to reap the bargain and start romance anew.

"It doesn't change the diamond if somebody wore it before you,'' Tobie Shapiro says.

It has to be some kind of a rule that you can't write about a pawnshop in "Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania," without at least once quoting a slice of Guy Mitchell's 1952 hit song of the same name:

There's a pawnshop on the corner
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
And I've just got to get five or 10
From a pawnshop on a corner
In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Gotta be with my angel again.

There was a time when many could relate to such a song, but the modern era seems to be sending the pawnbroker the way of the blacksmith. As if Mr. Shapiro needed another sign that it was time to get out, he was robbed at gunpoint a couple of years ago.

They'll finish out the year, but the Shapiros already have earned their retirement.