A family pawn shop that grew a prom room
Bill and Alta Robb owned a small gun shop in Chicago before they traded the city for Hope, a Bartholomew County town on State Road 9, and opened the Gold Nugget Pawn Shop in 1979. The family still owns and runs it, and the website lays claim to being the third oldest pawn shop in the Hoosier state. The counters hold what pawn counters usually hold: jewelry, musical instruments, guns, tools and electronics. The racks along the floor hold prom dresses.
The dresses arrived nine years after the shop did. In a 2023 feature in The Republic, Columbus's daily paper, Jackie Robb Tallent, the founders' daughter, recalled suggesting in 1988 that the store consign formal gowns. Her father went along with it, and the paper reported that he thought the dresses brought great energy into the store. The prom side has been part of the business ever since, and Tallent runs it as proprietor today.
Over the years the balance has shifted from secondhand to new. The Republic put the mix at about 80 percent new gowns and 20 percent consignment, and reported that the shop had sold more than 500 dresses the previous year. That is a substantial number for a store in a town of a couple thousand people, and it reflects how far the shop's reach extends into the surrounding county.
We offer a huge selection of new and consigned dresses. Over 300 dresses in stock with sizes ranging from 0 to 28.
Those two sentences open the prom page of the family's website, and the size range is the detail to hold onto. A girl who wears a 24 can shop the same racks as her friend in a 2, which counts for a lot in a small town.
Consigning a gown after the dance
The consignment arrangement that started the prom business still runs alongside the new stock, and The Republic's reporting laid out the terms, along with Tallent's advice on timing.
After the dance
Bring the dress in soon rather than waiting a year or two
On the rack
The consigned gown sells alongside the new stock
When it sells
The seller keeps 60 percent, the store 40 percent
The reason for the hurry is that styles turn over quickly. A gown from last spring has a better shot on the rack than one from three seasons ago.
Hauser, the Columbus schools and the January rush
Hope's own students attend Hauser Jr./Sr. High School, part of the Flat Rock-Hawcreek school corporation, so a good share of the shop's prom customers live within a few minutes of Jackson Street. The bigger pool sits south on State Road 9 in Columbus, where Columbus North and Columbus East are the county's two large public high schools. Shelbyville High School students to the north can reach Hope on the same state road.
Prom is the peak, but the shop dresses more than one kind of event. The Republic listed winter formals, pageants, military balls and adult proms among the occasions, and described a young pageant contestant who shops the racks for the Bartholomew County 4-H Princess Pageant. Selection is widest early in the year. The shop runs a January shopping event called Prom Palooza, which reached its fourteenth edition in January 2023.
For families elsewhere in south-central Indiana, the shop's posted schedule on its website is the thing to check before setting out, because the prom racks share their hours with the pawn counter. Hope itself is small enough that Jackson Street is easy to find once you reach the center of town.
The Gold Nugget prom racks, explained
Can I sell my old prom dress at The Gold Nugget?
Yes. Consigned gowns sell alongside new ones, and the seller keeps 60 percent of the sale price while the store keeps 40 percent. Bring it in the season after you wear it.
Does the shop carry gowns for events other than prom?
Yes. Pageant gowns, winter formal dresses and gowns for military balls and adult proms all turn over here, in sizes from 0 to 28.