I've recently returned after a very long break, so this is new to me. I don't make or sell custom wearables, so does this affect me at all? People seem very excited about this, but I don't understand how it's different from buying/selling custom wearables in the standard fashion.

Plz Ignore. ^^ Darkrai explained everything best.

Short answer, if you don't buy or sell CWs then no, you probably won't care about the pawn shop opening.

The pawn shop buys CWs (copies of items that are already on site) for low prices. It's a good way to quickly offload CWs that you no longer want that either aren't selling or if you need the CSC fast or just don't want to deal with trying to sell through the forums. Those items are then sold through the pawn shop while it's open, for higher prices than they were sold to the shop for but lower than the "standard" usual price they would be sold at via CW shops, if that makes sense.

Because people pawn items for a wide variety of reasons, sometimes you can find items in there that are hard to find elsewhere. And because the prices are fairly low, even if you don't find specific wishlist items in there, you can find items that you may not have bought for "full" price but would want to try and work with at, essentially, a discount

Darkrai's explanation nailed it! if you have CSC to spend it's worth poking your head in to see what's been pawned for lower prices and Wishlist finds, but if you don't really interact with CWs or CSC purchases in general then you're not missing anything huge.