The Dealer, The Fence & Hot Goods

There are two ways to gear up, and they're deliberately opposite trade-offs.

The Dealer — legit, safe, Clean Cash

The Dealer is the straight retail store: fixed prices, Clean Cash only (plus the standard use-tax on the spend), and the gear you walk out with is never flagged hot — it adds no extra Heat, and a RICO seizure can never take it from you.

The Fence — hot, cheap, player-run

The Fence is a player-to-player marketplace, not an NPC shop: you list an item you own at your own asking price, Dirty Cash both legs, and someone else buys it. The house (the Fence itself) takes a 20% cut of the sale — a Hacker sees a 10% discount off that cut. Anything you pick up through the Fence is hot goods: it raises your Heat generation by 5%, and a triggered RICO seizure carries a 25% chance of taking an equipped hot item along with your cash and drugs. It's genuinely cheaper gear, in exchange for genuinely real risk — that trade-off is the whole point of the split, not an oversight.

Pawning

Need cash fast rather than a buyer? The Pawn Shop (a district venue, same as the Gun Store and Chop Shop) buys items outright for a cut below their value — the fast, certain option next to the Fence's cheaper-but-slower player listing. The standard rate is 40% of an item's value, in Dirty Cash, less whatever cut the local Pawn Shop's owner is charging.

Two things pay you more than that, and both are about being good at moving goods: the Street specialization adds +15%, and Street's Fence Ties skill node adds another +6% (and knocks 4% off the Fence's cut on top).

Crate goods are marked

Anything that came out of a contraband crate pawns at the flat 40% base rate — no specialization bonus, no skill-tree bonus, for anybody. That mark stays on the item permanently, including if it changes hands on the Fence, so buying someone else's crate goods doesn't wash it off.

The reason is simple: your pawn bonuses are for moving gear you stole, earned, or outgrew. They're not meant to make gambling profitable. Without this rule, a Street player could buy crates and pawn the duds for more than the crates cost — an unlimited free reroll for rare gear, which is exactly what was happening before it was fixed.

So a crate is still a good gamble — you get most of your money back when you dump a roll you don't want — but churning crates to fish for Legendaries costs real money. Open them for the gear.

Everything else — crime drops, gear you bought and outgrew, items you picked up on the Fence — pays your full bonus rate as normal.