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[rinkworks]

I was worried about this card.  Cards that allow a good buy/gain in the same turn as heavy trashing tend to be powerhouses (Masquerade; Trading Post, when bought early; Forge, except that it costs $7).  Pawn Shop allows this on an unprecedented scale:  trash 3-4 Coppers and get a $3-$4 card too?  Surely Pawn Shop needed to cost $5.

But I think it's just fine, mainly because unless you have help, you tend not to be able to use it much.  After that first turn trashing 3-4 Coppers, you're lucky if you get to do that again.  More likely you get to trash 1-2 Coppers a couple more times (so good $2 cards are important) and then it's a dead card.  It's definitely a great early buy, but $3 is fine.  It passes the "open with two" test that $3 cards must pass:  since one Pawn Shop becomes a dead card quickly, two Pawn Shops become dead even more quickly.

Of course there is the other option -- breaking a card up into Coppers.  That's a much more situational use, good with alt-VP (especially Gardens) and maybe once in the end-game as a last-ditch move to pull in an extra green card.  As it's generally worse than Salvager (no +Buy, no Copper flooding), I'm not too worried about that one.

I did experiment with breaking up Estates into Coppers in the early game.  On its own, that's probably a bad move, for the same reason that, generally speaking, you'd rather return two Coppers with an Ambassador than one Estate.  But if those two Coppers can then be used by Pawn Shop to gain a better card later, maybe it's a good idea.  My tests were too sketchy to be conclusive on this point, but it definitely did not play as sweetly as the idea perhaps sounds.

But all that changes with the right combos in place.  I played Pawn Shop on a Tactician turn and trashed 6 Coppers for 1 Gold.  Obviously that was amazing.  I'm not worried about it -- it's a power combo that's fine being a power combo -- and there is a cost to delaying the use of Pawn Shop until you've got a combo (whatever it might be) set up in the first place.

Bottom line, this card is really nice, and after some cursory testing I can't find any flaw with it.

[Archetype]

Pawn Shop and Canal are my favorite cards of the set. Glad to see Pawn Shop is fine, but maybe the $4 price tag is needed.

[ta56636]

I've played some games with this card - seems well balanced, and I found it fun.  It's a tricky card to use well - but with multiple options - seemed appropriate for $3.  I like it...

[XerxesPraelor]

Pawn shop is my favorite card in the set, along with Museum. I've tested it a few times, and though it's quite good with gardens, the copper trashing takes a while, and the card turns useless before you know it.

[ta56636]

Pawn shop is my favorite card in the set, along with Museum. I've tested it a few times, and though it's quite good with gardens, the copper trashing takes a while, and the card turns useless before you know it.

Although is it not also useful in the very endgame to destroy your deck for the last few victory cards?

E.g. a draw of Gold, Silver, Province, Province, Pawn Shop.  You can Pawn Shop your Gold for a province buy.

[XerxesPraelor]

Yeah, it's useful, but Apprentice is almost as useful for that small case and is way more useful the rest of the time. I probably worded my statement too strong. It's definitely balanced, I was just pointing out its downpoints.

[blueblimp]

I've never played with it unfortunately since I don't have a regular IRL group these days, but given the observation that the copper-gaining tends to be less relevant, maybe it'd be worth deleting that option in order to reduce the text length, if the copper-trashing is interesting enough on its own. The main reason that it got both options in the first place (apart from the flavour, although I forget whether that came before or after the mechanic) was that cards like Moneylender/Spice Merchant offend my perfectionism by leaving me with Estates in my deck through the whole game. At least with Pawn Shop, it's possible to get rid of those Estates, although perhaps not convenient.

[NoMoreFun]

The copper gaining is interesting with Throne Room and handy for the card not being dead weight in the late game.