But when it became obvious that an item signed by George Washington could hold more than sentimental value, collecting became a capitalist enterprise. Those same family members knew it was an item of worth, and they held on to it for that reason as well. As time passed and generations became further removed, that item gradually lost its sentimental value and became primarily an object of monetary value.
At that point, it might show up in my shop.
Most irrationality is temporary. Like baseball cards, Furbys, and Beanie Babies, fads rush in and then die a quick death. But there are a million things that are permanently irrational. For instance, if you have the right Pez dispenser, it’s worth thousands. Why are they different than Zippo lighters? Who knows? There are so many niche collectors and markets out there, you can make some serious observations about human nature—and make a buck or two along the way.
I spent $10,000 on what amounts to a cap-gun collection, and I got a good deal. I have a guy who knows a guy—there’s a lot of that in my business—and he sent this collector to me when he found out the guy wanted to sell. He had enough vintage cap guns and Wild West toys to fill an entire room of his house. One of the sets in the collection I bought is a Bat Masterson costume made in the 1950s. It’s a holster, vest, cap gun, and cane. It was featured on the show, and it’s really cool. The top and bottom of the cane are actually metal. The holster is leather. You’d never find that level of detail today. It would be plastic and vinyl today.
For that one costume alone, my guy says I can get $1,000. I think I can get more.
There are so many little fanatic collectors out there. All you have to do is search message boards and fan sites on the Internet and you’ll find people willing to pay money for stuff that nobody else would consider to be worth anything. That’s why I laugh at some people in this country who say they’re poor. I deal with people who consider themselves poor but have these elaborate collections of niche stuff. This is the only country in the world where you can be poor and have a vast collection of something.
In the 1970s, the Pet Rock craze hit. People paying money for a rock in a box because someone in a corporate office decided to call it a “pet”—this was like the ultimate practical joke on the American consumer. It was like, “Let’s see how far we can take this.” Well, it worked. Pet Rocks made millions of dollars. And now, if you can get an original Pet Rock, it’s worth $100. I understand what you’re thinking: How can you find someone to validate the authenticity of a rock? Here’s the thing: It’s all in the box. You have to have the right box, or else you’re out of luck. The packaging is what is worth the $100, as crazy as that sounds.
Some fad products end up in my shop only after they run their course. In some cases, I can make money on the back side of a fad. One example: grills. Mouth grills were made popular by rappers, and they became immensely popular in certain segments of the population. They were cool for a while, and then they weren’t cool, which is when they started showing up at the pawn counter.
The first time a customer showed up wanting to pawn his grill, one of my employees came to me with a stricken look on his face.
“He wants to pawn his grill,” he told me.
“OK, is it gold?”
“Yes.”
“Then take it.”
“But, Rick, it’s still in his mouth.”
“I don’t care what it looks like or where it came from—it’s gold. It’s worth money. Pick it up with a napkin, spray it with Windex, and weigh it.”
We had a lot of guys come in selling or pawning the grills right out of their mouths. They’d walk into the store and stick a hand into their mouth and pull the grill out. Some of the grills had a few hundred dollars’ worth of gold in them—as much as ten or twenty grams of gold. Some had diamonds embedded in them. Damn right it was worth my time to buy them right out of someone’s mouth.
I make no apologies. I have always said I would sell bat guano if there was a good enough market for it. If I knew someone who would give me more for it than I paid for it, I’d have a truck pulling up and dropping bat shit off in my driveway right now.
A down economy kills fads. The last few years, there have been very few products that have sent consumers into a frenzy. It makes sense—when people don’t have a lot of money, they’re going to be more rational and less inclined to spend $200 for a $12 toy just because their kids are hounding them for it.
There are some mini-fads right now. King Baby jewelry is pretty hot. People are willing to pay a premium for anything that says “King Baby” on it. They’ll pay as much as $2,000 for a bracelet.
Other than that, the biggest fad we’ve profited from lately is the show. Pawn Stars has become its own mini-craze, with our swag department selling more T-shirts and shot glasses and caps than we ever thought possible.
We have a massive rivalry within the store about who’s selling the most swag—bobbleheads, T-shirts, whatever we have in the store. And you can bet we keep up with it. We check the sales figures every day for bragging rights.
The fact that Chumlee is usually the one with the bragging rights tells you something about the country, too.
I’d love to see the economy turn around so we can get back to the days of the irrational consumer crazes. I sure miss ’em.
CHAPTER 14
Not for Sale
There are a handful of items in the shop that we aren’t interested in selling. Instead of price tags, they have tags that say “Not For Sale.” For the most part, that means we’ve decided those items are priceless, but what it really means is I won’t sell them unless the price is really, really right.
We’ve had people make offers on these items, but we still haven’t sold them. If you put a tag on something that says “Not For Sale,” it’s amazing how many people decide they absolutely have to have it. There’s a museum aspect to some of it; we like to keep some of our better conversation pieces around to give people a reason to come in and look around. Some of them are kept around for public relations reasons; during Super Bowl week, it’s always good to let the media know we have a few Super Bowl rings in the case.
Old Man, Corey, and I make a point of saying we never fall in love with stuff we buy, but it’s inevitable that some things are going to be cooler than others. We all have interests, and my interests definitely dictate the items that are considered not for sale. After all, when you’ve got Benny Binion’s hat, you can’t help but fall in love just a little bit.
Three Olympic Bronze Medals
Joe Greene was a U.S. track and field athlete who won the bronze medal in the long jump in 1992 in Barcelona and 1996 in Atlanta. Both times the gold was won by Carl Lewis. Greene pawned both of his medals and never picked them up. We held them and held them, well beyond the obligatory length of time, and eventually it became clear he wasn’t coming back.
Originally, I decided these two medals were not for sale because I didn’t think I would ever get another one. What are the odds, right? (Plus, to have a medal from one of the American Games is beyond cool.) We’ve been conditioned to believe that Olympic athletes are the most committed and dedicated athletes in the world. They give up everything to train for something that—in most cases—doesn’t bring a huge monetary award. For that reason, it seems unlikely that they would see the medals themselves in financial terms.
As it turned out, six months after I put the two bronze medals into the wall case behind the counter (and next to the Jim Morrison painting), I had a guy walk in with another Olympic medal.
What are the odds, right?
This guy had a medal from the 1960 Summer Games in Rome, which separates it from any other modern Olympic Games medal. The 1960 Summer Games were the only ones to engrave the sport on the back of the medal. With any other Olympiad, the medals are plain—gold, silver, bronze—with nothing to identify either the winner or the sport in which it was won.
The medal the customer was selling was a swimming bronze medal. There’s still no way of telling
who won it, or which event it was for, but it’s pretty cool to have a medal that at least has the sport on it.
I asked the guy to tell me the story behind it, and he said, “We found it at the bottom of my grandfather’s chest after he died.”
“Was it his?”
“No,” he said. “It’s the weirdest thing: We have no idea how it got there.”
Grandpa wasn’t a swimmer, much less an Olympic medalist. And as far as the family knew, Grandpa didn’t have a connection to anyone who was.
Patriots Super Bowl ring
Brock Williams was a defensive back with the New England Patriots in 2001, the team’s first Super Bowl–winning season. He spent most of the season, including the Super Bowl, on the injured-reserve list after blowing out his knee. A couple of years later, he showed up at the night window in the early hours of the morning with his Super Bowl ring. The night-shift guy called me at home and told me what was going on, so I came down to check it out.
The ring was legitimate, and so was he, so I wasn’t concerned that it was stolen. He wanted to pawn it, not sell it, and I offered him a lot of money for it if he wanted to sell it. He was insistent on pawning it, and he asked for only $1,500.
A few nights later, he came back and asked if he could get some more money. Obviously, with an item this valuable, there’s no problem with him getting more money. It’s like a credit card, and his card was far from maxed out. But the way it works inside the shop is kind of tricky. The person adding to the loan has to first mark it in the computer as “redeemed,” which usually means “picked up.” And then, after that step is concluded, the employee has to start new paperwork on the new loan amount. It’s just a processing thing, but it eventually becomes relevant to this story.
Williams wanted—and got—$800 more for his ring. No big deal. But when I looked at the paperwork the next morning, I saw the word “Redeemed” and the item—2001 New England Patriots Super Bowl ring—and I assumed Williams had come in and picked up the ring. Either I read through the extra $800 loan or it didn’t register when I saw it.
A little backstory is in order: I have always gone through the manila envelopes containing jewelry that has come off pawn and joked, “One of these days I’m going to be going through these and the Holy Grail is going to fall out.”
Old Man and I used to alternate processing the defaults every morning. He liked to open the envelopes and assess what new possessions had come our way with the changing of the calendar day. I liked it, too, and on this morning I was sifting through the envelopes when I came across one that felt different. Most of them contain jewelry—chains, rings, necklaces—but this one felt much heavier.
When I opened it up, a 2001 New England Patriots Super Bowl ring fell out.
And that is about as close to the Holy Grail as you can get.
My jaw dropped. I thought for sure he had picked it up. I walked around the office holding this huge ring, saying, “I thought for sure he had picked it up.”
I set it aside for a few weeks, and still nothing. Then I decided I would display it along with my other two Super Bowl rings, one of which was the only female Super Bowl ring ever produced. (It was made for the wife of Rams general manager John Shaw.) From the beginning, I put a tag on the Patriots ring that said, “$100,000,” but it’s really not for sale.
This ring is a showstopper. I’ve gotten more publicity from having this ring than almost any other item in the shop. Whenever the Patriots made the Super Bowl in subsequent years—after the 2003, 2004, and 2007 seasons—we would put the ring on eBay with an exorbitant reserve. We had no intention of selling it, but within a day we’d receive phone calls from ten different newspapers wanting to do a story on the Super Bowl ring. And since a ton of people fly into Vegas to watch and gamble on the Super Bowl, it served to increase foot traffic as well. If a bunch of guys from Boston fly to Vegas to watch the Super Bowl, they’re going to come into the shop at some point to check out the Patriots ring.
But this ring is not for sale for another reason: It’s a weird ring. That’s part of its appeal to me. The NFL, because it has rules for everything, has official rules regarding Super Bowl rings—size, shape, number of jewels. A team’s first ring can only be a certain size, the next one can be a little bigger, and so on. I have no idea who determines the scale, but it exists.
However, when the Patriots won their first Super Bowl, their owner, Bob Kraft, said the hell with the NFL rules. He was going to do whatever he wanted with the rings. And he did. For instance, the first ring is supposed to be only ten carats, but this one’s fourteen. It’s only supposed to weigh so much, but this one weighs 50 percent more than the standard.
This ring is the one that broke all the rules. Now you see why I like it so much?
Benny Binion’s hat
Benny Binion is a Las Vegas legend. He’s one of a handful of men who can legitimately say he was at the forefront of making Vegas what it is today. He was by all accounts a murderer a few times over—twice prosecuted—but he was a hell of a businessman and visionary.
He owned Binion’s Horsheshoe Casino, which he immediately made famous in 1951 by making it the casino with the highest limits in Vegas. He set a craps table limit of $500, which was ten times higher than any other casino at the time. He was also the inventor of the World Series of Poker. He started out by having one-on-one poker tournaments between high rollers, and eventually he got the idea for the WSOP. Every time you see poker on television, or any time you see a local charity conducting a no-limit Texas Hold ’Em tournament, you’ve got Benny Binion to thank. For all his faults, he was one of a handful of people who shaped Las Vegas into what it is today.
And I have his hat. The story of how I came to have his hat is one of the more random and obscure backstories in the shop. One day an employee walked into my back office and put a Stetson 30x hat on my desk. (The designation “30x” was not a size but a percentage of beaver fur in the hat.) I looked it over—nice hat—and told him to offer $50 because I figured I could get $100 for it on eBay. I didn’t give it a second thought, and I never even knew whether the employee bought it.
A month later, I was processing inventory. The guys were bringing me items, and one of them was a small suitcase. I opened it up and found it was a custom hat case with the Stetson in it. I handed it to one of the guys and told him to give it to the eBay department to sell for $100. But as I closed the lid, I noticed an old Frontier Airlines address sticker on the side. I’m always curious, so I looked at it and saw:
LESTER B. BINION
128 FREMONT ST.
LAS VEGAS, NV
Needless to say, I canceled my plans to sell the hat on eBay. A few months after the show started, Binion’s daughter came in to take a look. She held it in her hands and said, “Right size, right style, right brand—that’s my dad’s hat.”
I have to admit: I have a fondness for this hat that probably exceeds what is reasonable. I love the old Vegas characters—no matter how unsavory—and I love the story of how this hat ended up in the shop. It’s the kind of classic story that typifies how cool my life is. Binion’s hat occupies a prominent space in the wall case, a shelf above the Olympic medals. I’ve had many offers on Binion’s hat, but it’s not for sale. It’s a piece of living Vegas history, and it’s staying in the shop as long as I have a say over it.
1490 Samurai Sword
First off, it was made in 1490, so that should be reason enough to keep me from selling my samurai sword. But moreover, there are practical reasons why the sword is not for sale.
This sword presents quite a conundrum. In restored condition, it’s worth somewhere between fifty and sixty grand. However, there’s a chip in the blade that keeps it from being in restored condition. In its current condition, I might get four or five grand for it. Big difference.
And here’s the conundrum: There is one guy in the country who could fix it, and he’s in Oregon. For six grand, he will re-hone the blade and fix the chip. But that proce
ss doesn’t come without risk. If cracks develop in the blade during the process—a real concern in something this old—it will be ostensibly worthless.
So . . . what do you do? Risk the six grand and try to turn it into a sword worth fifty or sixty grand, knowing it might become a worthless sword? Or hold on to it and show it off as one of the coolest and oldest things in the shop?
Besides, when am I going to get another 1490 samurai sword?
Two-hundred-year-old Japanese Porn Scroll
Maybe my worst purchase ever. I didn’t really think this one all the way through. It’s an amazing piece of work. It’s ten feet long, with the painting on rice paper backed by silk. What is immediately striking about it is how graphic it is—phenomenally graphic for something two hundred years old. It’s got several scenes, and it shows everything you could imagine in each of them. If you thought people got kinky and weird just since the Internet showed up, you ought to look at this scroll.
I tell people, “This thing would scare any young girl away from sex for life. Men simply aren’t built like that.”
So why is it not for sale? Simple: I can’t display this thing in the shop. It would shock women (and some men) and scare kids.
Plus, my mom comes into the store. There’s just no way I want her seeing this thing.
Iwo Jima Battle Plans
So a guy walks into the shop and tells me his father was an army officer in the Pacific theater during World War II and he kept these battle plans in his pocket through much of the war. He unfolds them for me and they’re battle plans for Iwo Jima. They’re drawn in color, too.
How cool is that?
License to Pawn: Deals, Steals, and My Life at the Gold & Silver Page 20