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Login Here Signup Here Signup using FacebookOkay, so what’s the wildest collateral anyone’s ever seen a lender actually accept for a business loan or merchant cash advance? I’m talking stuff that made you go “wait, they took THAT?”
Last year my buddy was desperate for quick working capital to keep his food truck afloat after the health department hit him with a surprise repair bill. He swore the funder let him put up his 1970s arcade machine collection (like original Pac-Man, Galaga, the works) plus a beat-up espresso trailer he barely uses anymore. I thought he was pulling my leg until he showed me the contract. Has anyone else run into lenders who’ll get creative like that when the usual invoices or real estate aren’t on the table?
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Man, the longer I’m around small businesses the more I realize traditional banks still act like you need a house or a fat stack of commercial property to even talk to them. Half the shop owners I know are sitting on random equipment, vehicles, or even crypto wallets that are worth real money but get blank stares when they try to borrow against them. It’s kinda wild how the gap between what banks want and what people actually have just keeps growing these days.
Haha, the arcade machines actually sound pretty tame compared to some stuff I’ve heard! Back when I was scrambling to cover inventory for my online store, the lender looked at everything—future credit-card sales obviously, but they also accepted my paid-off box truck, a couple commercial refrigerators, and get this… my season tickets to the Knicks (face value was decent). They basically just wanted anything with verifiable value they could liquidate if things went south. Ended up going with a group that specializes in exactly this kind of flexible collateral because the banks laughed me out the door. If you’re ever in that spot, places where it is easy to get business loan are surprisingly open to weird assets as long as you can prove ownership and roughly what it’s worth. Saved my bacon without having to beg family for money.