New Jersey dealers · Transaction records
The rule that binds you was written by your town, and it changes at the next town line.
If you buy scrap, precious metals, or secondhand goods in New Jersey, you are working under two sets of rules at once. The state sets one floor. Your municipality sets its own on top of it, and those local ordinances are where the specific requirements live: how the photograph has to be taken, what goes in the police database and how fast, how long you have to hold an item before it moves.
Most owners we have spoken with so far are running on what an inspector told them once, some years ago, in a different town. That is not carelessness, it is the normal state of things when the requirement is buried in a municipal code nobody hands you a copy of.
Run this yourself
The twenty ticket check
- Pull your last twenty transactions, whatever form they live in, paper tickets, your point of sale, or the reporting software.
- For each one, ask three questions. Is there a photograph of the seller, taken the way your ordinance describes it? Is every item photographed on its own, rather than a pile in one shot? Did the database entry go in inside the window your town allows?
- Count how many of the twenty fail on at least one of the three. Write the number down.
0 to 1 of 20. Your counter process is holding. The thing worth checking next is whether it still holds on a Saturday, or when the person who normally does it is out.
2 to 5 of 20. The process works when the person doing it is thinking about it. That is the pattern that tends to break during a busy stretch, which is also when the transaction you would least like to explain comes through the door.
6 or more of 20. This is not a discipline problem, it is a process problem, and the good news about a process problem is that it is fixable without asking anybody to try harder.
What the rules actually say
New Jersey sets record keeping obligations by what you deal in. Scrap metal businesses keep transaction records available to law enforcement for a period measured in years, not months. Precious metals dealers work under their own statute with a shorter retention period and their own hold requirements before an item can move. Pawnbrokers report to the police on a daily cycle. On top of whichever of those applies to you, your municipality's own dealer ordinance sets the photograph, identification and database entry requirements, and the local clock is usually the tightest thing in the file.
Scrap metal businesses: N.J.S.A. 45:28. Precious metals: N.J.S.A. 51:6A. Pawnbrokers: N.J.S.A. 45:22. Your own municipal dealer ordinance sits on top of these, and it is the one that decides the details. All of it is public, and we would rather you read the source than take our word for it.Here is the part that trips people up. The state rule and the town rule are not alternatives, and satisfying one does not satisfy the other. A shop can be perfectly clean on retention and still be missing the photograph the ordinance describes, on every ticket, for years, because nobody ever put the two documents side by side.
What we do about it
We read your ordinance, not a generic one
We pull the dealer chapter for your actual municipality and your license type, and we grade your records against that, because it is the one an inspector will use.
We sample your own book
You supply the tickets. We go through them line by line and hand back what passed, what did not, and which of the three requirements it failed on.
We keep the record dated
Each review is logged and stamped, so what you hold is a continuous history rather than a folder of loose screenshots.
When police ask, you are ready
We help authorized reviewers find and organize the relevant records and footage faster, so a request does not eat somebody's afternoon.
What this will not do
- It does not identify people, and it will never tell you who somebody is.
- It does not prove that anything was stolen, and it does not decide what happened. It organizes the record for the people whose job that is.
- It does not file your reports for you or talk to the police on your behalf. Those stay yours.
- It is not legal advice, and we are not your attorney. We document what your file contains against the text of the rule. What that means for your license is a conversation for you and your lawyer.
- Where a photograph or a recording will not support a conclusion, we will tell you that in writing rather than dress it up.
How it goes
- You tell us your town and what you deal in. That is genuinely most of it. Those two facts decide which rules apply to you, and we can have that answer before you have committed to anything.
- We grade a sample of your own tickets. Twenty is usually enough to show the pattern. You will see exactly which requirement is the one slipping.
- You get it in writing. A short written read on where you stand and what we would do about it, yours to keep either way.
- Ongoing, only if you want it. Plenty of owners take the written read and fix it themselves, and that is a complete engagement. If you would rather we kept checking, we stay.
Tell us your town and what you buy.
Two facts, and we can tell you which rules are actually on you. It costs you a message and it might save you a bad afternoon.
Send an inquiryPolarity Management LLC, a registered New Jersey company. We work from what you send us, nothing is installed, and NDAs are optional from the first conversation.
Or write to inquiries@polarityagc.com and a person will answer you. Upon request, we can travel to you.
Running a licensed cannabis business instead? Your clock is continuous rather than per transaction, and the number that matters is how far back your recorder actually reaches: NJ cannabis surveillance and the thirty day archive.