When Jim De Lisa’s chain of six furniture stores went belly-up midrecession, the New Jersey father of five found himself in a fix. He was suddenly unemployed and broke, and his credit score, he says, was “in the crapper.” Pushed to the edge by looming house and car payments, he did the unthinkable: He pawned his wife’s ,000 engagement ring. But no one ever saw him visit the pawnshop — De Lisa hocked the 1.7-karat stunner over the Internet.

Is no industry immune to the inexorable forces of technology and gentrification? These days, even the pawn business is going upscale. Pawn merchants say the recessionary credit crunch is bringing in more middle-class clients along with small businesses seeking short-term loans to meet payroll. Jordan Tabach-Bank, CEO of Beverly Loan Co. in Beverly Hills (“Pawnshop to the Stars”), says he’s seen a flood of doctors, lawyers and accountants hocking valuables to keep their kids in private school. There’s a pawn store reality show airing on the History Channel and an iPhone app to help high-tech indigents locate the nearest pawnbroker. If the trend continues, hocking the family jewels may become as mainstream as applying for a credit card.

While pawnshops still charge eye-popping interest rates (up to 25 percent in some states), the once shady industry is rapidly going Disney. Pawn consultant Steve Krupnik says the sector’s three publicly traded chains took cues from traditional retailers, deploying clean-cut employees, suburban locations and efficient technology. “They’ve forced the marginal operators to clean up,” he adds.

Some of the nation’s 13,000 pawnshops lure the (formerly) affluent with private appointments and house visits. In New York, EZ Pawn, an eight-store chain, is placing ads in local magazines. Pawn magnate Craig McCall, whose 13 Oregon and Arizona locations are in traditional shopping centers (two are in former Hollywood Video stores), decorates some shops with wainscoting and leather chairs at the loan desk: “There’s no bars anywhere!” He even tried dressing his associates in shirts and ties, but they got too grubby lugging pawned lawn mowers and power tools. He settled for red polo shirts and khakis.

Perhaps the most intriguing new model is Jim De Lisa’s lender: Pawngo.com, an online pawnbroker backed by .8 million in venture capital. Clients get an online estimate, FedEx their valuables to the company’s Centennial, Colo., office park vault (Pawngo pays the shipping and insurance), and get a loan wired to their bank account within 24 hours. CEO Todd Hills says most of his clients wouldn’t dream of frequenting a pawnshop — they’re hocking Cartier watches, Louis Vuitton bags, even a Picasso. His typical loan runs about ,700, 17 times the 0 pawn-industry average.

The upside: Like all pawn loans, Pawngo transactions are never reported to the credit bureaus. If you default, all you’ve got to lose is your dearly departed mother’s wedding ring. But the price for discretion is stiff; Pawngo’s annual percentage rates range from 48 to 84 percent, depending on loan size. De Lisa says he paid more than ,000 in interest on his 15-month loan worth less than ,000. At least he’s getting the ring back in time for his sixth wedding anniversary. And the experience has him considering new options: “I should open my own pawnshop!”

What he did: Actor Dan Aykroyd gained fame as a member of the original cast of Saturday Night Live, where some of his characters were known for their dubious business ideas (think: Irwin Mainway and his Bag-o-Glass kids’ toys). But in real life, Aykroyd has a profitable venture on his hands Crystal Head Vodka, a boutique spirit packaged in a bottle that resembles a human skull. Since the brand launched in 2008, sales have exceeded million, with more than a million bottles sold.

How he did it: Many celebrities have gotten into the booze biz others include Justin Timberlake and Sean “Diddy” Combs. But Aykroyd’s brand has earned some admiring attention within the liquor industry. While he boasts about his vodka’s ingredients, observers say he’s also been a relentless marketer, appearing at dozens of promotional events and overseeing the design of the eye-catching packaging, inspired by his interest in the supernatural. “It’s not like he put his name on it and left it at that,” says Eric Schmidt, a director of the Beverage Information Group, which tracks the spirits business.

Why he did it: Aykroyd’s first foray into the booze biz was as cofounder of a distributor. Launching his own vodka brand was a logical way to extend the enterprise, though Aykroyd had to tap the college fund for his three daughters to create Crystal Head. “It was all the cash I had lying around,” he says, “so I said to the girls, ‘We’re going into the vodka business!’” But he hopes that in addition to paying dividends now, the project will become a business his kids can take over one day a meaningful alternative, financial pros say, to simply leaving them a large inheritance.

I am tempted to pay the 0,000 balance on my mortgage and live debt-free. How do I estimate the tax benefit of the interest paid on the mortgage?

Gaurav Aggarwal, Andover, Mass.

“Live debt-free” sure has a nice ring to

it. Estimating the tax benefit involves just a few simple calculations and a little help from an online calculator, like the one on SmartMoney.com. The key question to ask: Is what you expect to earn by investing the money likely to be greater than the cost of the mortgage, after the tax benefit? If so, it may make sense to keep it invested, says Lynn Mayabb, a Kansas City, Mo. based financial planner with BKD Wealth Advisors. And while they’re uncommon these days, some prepayment penalties do exist, so be sure to check your mortgage contract.

When it comes to constructing the ideal portfolio, investors typically turn to the same building blocks: stocks, bonds and cash options like CDs. But that’s so 2006. At a time of increasing global uncertainty, many are reconsidering that traditional formula and saying they’d prefer something more tangible and portable. Like gold. Or diamonds. Or even vintage designer purses.

“They continue to grow in value,” says New York public relations executive Angela Calman-Wonson of her collection of vintage bags. But those bags represent only a small portion of Calman-Wonson’s portfolio; she also invests half her savings in items ranging from rare books to limited-edition photographs. And while she does keep the other half in standard financial vehicles “I’m not going to be accumulating a pile of Chanel handbags to pay for four years of my child’s college education,” she says she believes that hard assets are increasingly the way to go.

She’s not alone. As evidenced by the much discussed increases in the prices of gold (up 28 percent in the past 12 months), silver (up 127 percent) and even palladium (up 58 percent), there’s strong demand for precious metals. And some pros say it’s also a good time to invest in items not necessarily traded on traditional exchanges. Prices of polished diamonds have risen 13 percent in the past year, according to Idex Online, which surveys the diamond market. Even collectibles show solid promise: While stocks may have experienced a lost decade of returns from 2000 to 2010, the price of autographs of famous figures spiked 147 percent during that same period, according to an index developed by Fraser’s Autographs, a leading memorabilia dealer in London.

But more to the point: It’s not just that there’s a market for such hard assets. Rather, it’s that investors are consciously folding them into their portfolios, not merely collecting them for enjoyment or “play money” speculation. And in some instances, they’re being encouraged to do so by financial advisers, who previously might have placed less emphasis on such alternative investments. New Jersey adviser Jeffrey Sica, who manages more than billion in assets for a small group of well-heeled clients, says in recent years he’s upped the portion of precious metals in client accounts from 10 percent to 25 percent. “There’s more interest in tangible assets than there ever has been in my 25-year career,” he says.

The big contributing factors? Concerns about inflation and a weakening dollar, partly stemming from the widening U.S. deficit, have prompted investors to seek an alternative path, say financial experts. (And there’s plenty of precedent for that: During the post World War II era’s worst five inflationary years 1946, 1974, 1975, 1979 and 1980 gold surged 130 percent, while the Dow dropped 12 percent on average.) Reinforcing this sentiment has been a distrust of financial institutions that’s remained in place since the market slide of 2008 09. Finally, there’s what might be called the Armageddon factor. When investors see the massive devastation in Japan, they see a more dangerous, unstable world; suddenly, having a cache of wealth they can hold in their hands begins to have a certain postapocalyptic allure.

While many old-fashioned advisers (ahem, “financial traditionalists”) acknowledge the gut-level appeal, they also point out the obvious: Investing in hard assets comes with all sorts of expenses and risks, starting with the lack of liquidity. There’s no stock exchange for, say, Louis Vuitton handbags. And don’t forget the cost of storage and insurance; it can cost up to ,000 annually for a New York City condo resident to insure million in jewelry, according to Chartis, a leading insurance provider. As for that doomsday scenario, many pros say investors would be better off stockpiling cans of tuna. “What do people think they’ll do? Use a Rembrandt to buy a carton of eggs?” asks Mitchell O. Goldberg, president of ClientFirst Strategy, a New York investment firm that serves clients in 13 states.

Still, even Goldberg sees a place for something tangible in a portfolio. He suggests commodities in the form of ETFs; he favors metals with an industrial use, especially copper. As for the hold-in-your-hands variety of wealth, Calman-Wonson did trade one of her precious bags for three weeks of postpartum care a few years ago. Turns out, the nurse she contacted was a collector as well. “Now that’s liquidity,” she says.