Pawn Stars

Cafe Society
61

:smiley:

Having worked in archives what drives me nuts is the expert (“I’m Frank from Frank’s Really Expensive Old Crap That I Say Is Real dot Com”) will be brought in to examine what the seller purports to be the original handwritten manuscript of Fall of the House of Usher or whatever and HE PICKS IT UP WITH HIS FRIGGING HANDS!!!
Try to do that in a special collections room even at an underfunded state junior college library, I dare ya. I’ll wait right here- go try it.

You try it yet? They laughed at you at first thinking you were joking then when they found you weren’t they pelted you with rocks and garbage and released an old woman in what looked like a shroud who chased you from the campus until the sun made her tattered clothing catch fire didn’t they?
If you really do have a 1755 receipt from Goody Cervix’s Maison du Extraordinary Teaties signed by Ben Franklin and the size of a movie ticket you don’t pick it up with your bare hands!!! It’s called “cotton gloves”- they’re not expensive and they protect it from skin oils and dead cells and even make it harder to accidentally tear it. Worst of all is when he looks at it and says “It’s real… at auction it would go for $50,000 to $80,000 easy” (or would have before he just wiped off his Tony Roma dry rub lunch residue on it). If this guy specializes in old documents you’d think he would know that and even own a pair. You’d think Rick would keep some on hand for his own protection. If the person you sell it to wants to use it as a coaster that’s their prerogative, but if your bud here’s going to do a pawn or whatever you treat it like a Mormon virgin with 12 6’8 Uzi toting brothers until it’s stored in an archival quality container and out of your possession.

And while I realize a lot of the show is scripted, I think Big Hoss needs to take Chumlee out and tell him about the bunnies.

Old Man: You take Chum out to tell him about the bunnies, boy?

Hoss: Yeah, I told him.

Rick: Good deal. Next time you want a butt boy get one with an ass that doesn’t cast shadows in two states. Go wash the blood off your hands… what’d you tell him about the bunnies with anyway?

Hoss: I was gonna use the Burbage flintlock dueling pistols but as fate would have it he expired from a massive coronary while struggling to get out of the seat belt anyway.

Rick: How many times have I told you that the flintlocks are only to be shot here in the store?

Old Man: Anybody seen Chum around today?

Hoss: Fuck you! This store’s gonna be mine one day and I’ll do what I want!

Rick: As soon as I finish this smoker wheeze laugh for no apparent reason I’m gonna go home and kick your mom in the mouth for giving me a kid like you!

Old Man: Somebody needs to tell Chum about the bunnies.

Hoss: I hate you! By the way I just paid $4,000 for an original 1907 color TV set.

Old Man: By tell him about the bunnies I mean kill him. I hate that bastard. Reminds me of a Korean madam who killed two of my best friends in the Navy.

Rick: Cory! You son of a… I’m going Tsarevich-killing-Tsar on your ass one day I swear!

Old Man: They weren’t even in Korea at the time. She came here to their houses. One lived in Phoenix and the other one in Omaha and she killed 'em with a machete. I been killing whores ever since to get even with her.

[cutaway]
Hoss: My dad seems to think that the only reason I have this job is because he and my grandpa hired me. I got here by merit! And how the hell was I supposed to know that an authentic Roman solidus wouldn’t be stamped 44 B.C.? They had to call the year something.
[confessional]
Rick: I know he’s my son, but I wanted to abort him when he was on the way and 25 years later I still do.
[confessional]
Old Man: I was in the Navy from 1903 to 1972 and I just shit on myself and I can do that because it’s my [bbbbeeeeeeeeeepppp] store!

I also hate how they make Rick look like he’s an expert on everything.

Rick: What have we got here?
Customer: It’s a commemorative coin from the Great Exhibition of 1851.

[confessional shot]
Rick: The Great Exhibition of 1851 is better known to historians as the first Exhibition of British Manufacturers and was held in a 14,000 square foot facility called Bingley House in Birmingham, England, which is today England’s second most populous city with a population of 3,683,000 and whose name derives from Brummagem which is why inhabitants are still called Brummies. The exhibition was held to showcase metalworkers and…

[rattles it off like exposition in a Dan Brown novel]

That said, if they ever remake Gilligan’s Island I think Rick would make a great Skipper. He doesn’t bear much resemblance to him in looks but he has almost identically that personality.

62

The weirdest thing to me about American Pickers is the obsession the one who looks like Al from Home Improvement (as opposed to the one who looks like a gay Tim Allen) has with oil cans. He’ll pay $100 for a not particularly attractive old oil can.

Is that a midwestern thing? I’ve never even heard of the market for them.

That said, they have a lot of overhead with the van and having to take everything back and hope it sells and whatever and nobody puts a gun to the head of the sellers, so I have no problem with them buying things way below what they’re worth. If the old guy writing his manifesto in the toolshed is happy with the $200 they paid for that Duesenberg then more power to them; that’s $200 more than he had before and there’s a couple of tons less metal in his back yard which should make it easier to find the remains of those stranded motorists. Also the fact that the Duesenberg is worth $4,000 in its restored condition or $20,000 if you put $5000 worth of work into it, as mentioned for Pawn Stars, research is ridiculously easy to do besides which it’s actually worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it, which might be $20,000 or might be jack squat.

63

Also, if you’re selling a rusty old piece of junk to a pawn shop, chances are good you don’t have the $5,000 needed to turn it into a really profitable item.
Oh, and the guys from American Pickers strike me as maladjusted creeps – not because of what they do, I mean, but rather as a matter of personality. That would not be a fun road trip.

64

The thing that bugs me about the Pickers guys is the amount of whining and complaining they do about the people they go to. The junk seller/ hoarder won’t budge on an item because they know they are getting low-balled or they just don’t want to part with the item. Ichabod Crane and the one who looks like Michael Madsens’ rapey friend in Kill Bill vol. 2- try to make it sound like theres something WRONG with these people that they don’t want to sell an old rail-road sign for a quarter. They know the guys are just going to turn around and try to sell it.

65

Does anybody else think Antique Archaeology is the exact opposite of a catchy and clever name for a business?

Not to mention that if you offer me $50 for my $20 flashlight and I don’t particularly want to sell it to you, that’s my right. It’s not like they’re buying from a “what you see is what you get/priced as marked” store; I have plenty of things that others might be interested in but I’m not interested in selling.

66

As a planner, whenever I watch American Pickers, I can’t help but think “don’t these communities have code enforcement departments?” Most parts of the country, if you have a ton of crap in your yard, you’re going to be in and out of court on a regular basis. Maybe they’re just in eastern Kentucky a lot, where visible hoarding is tolerated.

Also, it seems like they’re dealing with hoarders, who probably are going to be resistant to parting with their “stuff.” Most are grizzled old men, which has me wondering what’s going to happen to all of that crap when they die. Why don’t the pickers just check out local obituaries, and the hit the field?

With Pawn Stars, I wonder whether Las Vegas really has so many experts in obscure fields. “I’m just going to call a buddy of mine who’s an expert in Austro-Hungarian militaria.” “There’s a buddy of mine that’s an expert in mortars that I want to see this first.” Do these buddies fly in from other parts of the country?

67

My understanding is that virtually all of pawn stars is staged.

I think people bring stuff in now, or that they write in and try to get on the show. The history channel guys decide what to put on the show. What is interesting, what isn’t. If it’s interesting, they do some research, write up an information package, and get the father up to speed. He spouts out the info like he actually knows what the hells he’s talking about. They make a deal or not.

Once the show is done filming, the give the guy is item back. He can take it home, sell it on ebay, or actually sell it to the pawn show if they can make a deal.

68

There is an aspect to the show that seems staged. I visited the shop when I was out in Las Vegas for a convention last January. They really did have some of the items for sale that people had brought in on the show, but as others have said, it was more a tourist attraction than a place of business in my opinion. It looked like their biggest business was selling ‘Pawn Stars’ T-shirts, coffee mugs, etc. The store is not particularly big, and the night I was there, it had a line out the door, perhaps because Chumlee was there.

Considering that it was an endless stream of people staring at the stuff in the display cabinets as part of a slowly moving line around the store, I would think if someone actually stopped to try to buy/sell something, it would create a huge bottleneck.

69

Enlighten us, please. What should be done with dead Granddad’s prized collection of lawn jockey porn?

Well, it’s not clever like Chemical Solutions, but what you gonna do?

70

Does anyone else think that “Big Hoss” is kind of a misnomer for Cory? He just has too much of a baby face. He looks like he’s 15.
What gets me is how stupid people are about how they treat their antiques. The guy who painted his gold figurines black and said “it’s art.” The old dude who scrubbed an antique silver revolver with a wire brush.

Or the idiots who think that just because something is old that it’s worth something. (Like the woman who brought in the printing press. It was nothing but scrap metal. The Old Man thought it was cool looking, at least, but other than that, it was junk.)

clarkstar no one is getting ripped off. What, are they supposed to offer someone the exact retail price? Then all that happens is they break even. It’s called a business.
You’re not going to get full retail price. If you don’t want to take what they offer at first, then go out and shop around. Try and sell it yourself, and see if you’ll get a better deal.
(And the Old Man is my favorite. He’s awesome)
I’ve tried to watch American Pickers, but it’s never been able to hold my interest.

71

I haven’t watched this season. (We gave up cable:() But, I came in to say hubby and I have been to their pawn shop. It was very interesting, but, most things were way over priced. We were looking for a ring for hubby. We found one he liked that was a lower carat weight than the one he lost, and they wanted nearly twice what he paid.

Then we had trouble getting a cab back to the strip. They didn’t want us to wait inside, so we waited 45 minutes in 120° weather in the shadeless parking lot.

72

Well played, sir.

Well played.

73

Sampiro: That was hilarious. Nicely done!

74

He reminds me of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle.

What gets me is the people who, having just been told that something is worth as much as $10,000 retail, sell it for $2,000. I can understand needing money then and there, but why not pawn it, investigate selling it, and if it seems you really might get 10k or even half that then redeem it and sell it and get several times that. I especially don’t understand it for the ones who don’t need fast cash.

One that irked me was a dad who was selling a family heirloom spoon made by Paul Revere. It was judged to be authentic and he got a few thousand dollars for it- way under the appraisal value- and he wanted it to help pay for his daughter’s lavish wedding.

Okay…

You’re a young lady and you’re getting married. Your dad has a spoon that

1- Has been in the family for generations
2- Has been judged as not only an original Paul Revere but a particularly good condition
3- Is, to the extent that any inanimate object can be, pretty much guaranteed never to go down in value
4- Has just this minute been appraised at more than twice what your dad is getting for it

Now, would you rather

1- Have this money go to pay for an open bar and prosciutto & melon balls for a bunch of people you don’t know for two hours at a wedding in a time when more than half of all marriages end in divorce
OR
2- Have a true piece of American history whose value is not only sentimental (family heirloom and all) but also, even if you hated great-granny or whoever it belonged to, going to be worth even more in 20 years?

If your marriage doesn’t work out, then you blew a one-of-a-kind item for half it’s value. If your marriage does work out and you remain well to do, then you’ve got one hell of an heirloom- the kind you mention specifically in a will. If your marriage does or doesn’t work out either one and if you remain well to do or lose your money either one, that thing will either pay for a car for your kid or send them to college for a year, possibly more.

It’s highly unlikely that they’ll build a new Target outside Boston and uncover a case of 300 mint condition Paul Revere spoons and it’s for absolute certain he’s not going to make any more. Change the open bar to “beer and wine plus a cash bar”, serve Little Smokies instead of prosciutto, and KEEP THE DAMNED SPOON, preferably in a safe deposit box. (Makes me almost hope this dumbass’s daughter runs off with her husband’s 16 year old groomsman cousin three months after the wedding just to teach Dad a life lesson about priorities.)

75

Or at least let dad go sell the fucking spoon at auction, so he can get some real money for it and it’ll go to a legit collector who will appreciate it for what it is. Yeah, that particular episode pissed me off, too.

76

I simply chalked it up to “People are idiots” and forgot about it until now. Works an amazing percentage of the time, in various situations, but seemed especially fitting for this one. Both dad and daughter.

77

Makes me wonder what these people are planning to do with the money that they’re willing to take so little for their unique items that will never depreciate. I mean, the shop brought in an expert who told you to your face that your whatever is worth $10,000, then Rick offers you $2,000 and you take it?! They can’t all be degenerate gamblers, can they?

If I were in that position I’d go get my shit independently appraised then either auction it or use it as collateral on a loan. The bank is surely going to give me a better deal than a guy who’s only interest is his resale profits.

78

The people just want fast money. If they really wanted to research the item and sell for a good price they would not go to a pawn shop.

I wonder how much cash they keep in the store because it seems like they always say they pay cash for an item - even if they pay $2000. A place with a lot of cash is a target for robberies. Or maybe when they say “cash money” that’s just for TV in some cases.

79

They do often show someone counting large stacks of bills.

In some pawn shops I’ve visited, many of the staff are armed. (Of course that wouldn’t look good on TV.)

80

Oh. :slight_smile: Thanks!

Not that it’s likely to ever be an issue for me, but whenever there are really big purchases I always wonder how I would deposit that much cash. I mean, are the people who sell things for $10,000 going to turn around and gamble all of it away? Even half of that seems like a lot to walk into a bank with.