Paris has the Louvre of pawnshops

That would be Credit Municipal of Paris, the pawnshop owned and operated by this city since 1777 where Auguste Rodin put up pieces of his sculptures to pay for new tools and Claude Monet had a friend buy back his late wife's beloved medallion so she could wear it in her casket. It got that cozy nickname after a young French royal hocked his watch to cover a gambling debt and told his mother he'd left it at the home of his aunt.

For centuries, that home has been an undistinguished Right Bank stone building with a sprawling underground maze of rooms that now hold 76,000 boxes of jewelry, racks of furs and countless odds and ends as well as a collection of art second in size only to the Louvre.

"We are like Ft. Knox," said Bernard Candiard, director-general of Credit Municipal, which takes any object worth between 60 ($93) and 2 million euros ($3 million) as security against a 12-month loan equal to half its value. The loans must be paid back with 8% to 12% interest or can be renewed indefinitely for a fee.

Every day, hundreds of Parisians take a number and wait on plastic benches to hand over jewels, furs and family heirlooms to raise cash.

They are mostly this city's forever-broke. Yet a few have known prosperity, like the gentleman who recently dropped off a 1986 Romanee-Conti, an admired Burgundy worth nearly $8,000.

Because in recent months, auntie has begun accepting wine.

"People can now exchange liquidity -- for liquidity," joked Candiard, who initiated the policy to take wine as collateral.

Candiard, who has been in his job less than two years, came up with the idea after he learned that one client was running a business out of auntie's public cellar. Because wine often gains value, and unlike a silver tea set or beloved Renoir is not obviously missed when it's pawned, Candiard cleared out the client's stash hoping to attract many more with wine to wager. (In auntie's cellar, the humidity is an opportune 80% and the temperature 53 degrees.)

Within a few weeks, the waiting room was crowded with other "gentlemen" cradling wooden wine crates alongside the many ladies lugging furs and plastic sacks filled with watches and bracelets. Behind discreet partitions awaited a team of experts who use tiny tools to pry open watches and guides to assess vintage claret.