Old pawn or dead pawn is the term used for pawned items that have not been redeemed by the borrower. Old pawn is especially applied to Native American items that have been pawned.
The reason collectors get excited about old pawn items is they are often exceptional pieces. Many indians used the traders pawn shop as other use a bank. Nice items were pawned and only brought out for special occasions. Thus implied in the term "Old Pawn" is the connotation of exceptional quality.
Our first experience with old pawn was also our best; unfortunately, we were to new to New Mexico to really take advantage of it. Some new friends took us to the Gramerco, NM trading post in 1972. We got back in the pawn room and they had boxes of the genuine old stuff. We spent everything we had, but really didn't know what we were doing.
The really unfortunate fact was the experience made us think that was what we should expect every time we went into a trading post. It was never repeated.
Thirty-five years later the internet finally provides a venue where we can show others photographs of the lovely silver and turquoise we found that day and describe the experience in detail.
Old Pawn on Ebay is where we talk about the risks and rewards of shopping Ebay for pawned items and do a search for "Dead Pawn". There is some overlap between the "Old Pawn" items shown at the bottom of this page and the "Dead Pawn", but not a lot; sellers seem to use one or the other.
A search for "Indian Pawn" turns out not to be useful because it duplicates the other searchs. In other words, all the sellers include the words "Indian" & "Pawn" for all their items.
Old pawn is now part of the Wealth with Websites network of sites.