TO MY FATHER, “THE OLD MAN”
Contents
Introduction
CHAPTER 1 - The Storm in My Head
CHAPTER 2 - Vegas Dreaming
CHAPTER 3 - The Hard Way
CHAPTER 4 - All Kinds—And Then Some
CHAPTER 5 - Old Man
CHAPTER 6 - It’s Just Stuff
CHAPTER 7 - Research in Action
Photographic Insert 1
CHAPTER 8 - Rick’s Rules of Negotiation
CHAPTER 9 - Big Hoss
CHAPTER 10 - A World of Secrets
CHAPTER 11 - The Legend of Bizzle
CHAPTER 12 - Chumlee
CHAPTER 13 - Easy Money
CHAPTER 14 - Not for Sale
CHAPTER 15 - Pawn Stars
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Introduction
This is my story, my family’s story, and the story of the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop. It’s also the story of Las Vegas, or at least a small slice of it, and the story of a world of characters unlike any you’ve ever encountered. One thing about my life: It’s never boring.
After twenty-two years in the family-run pawn business, all of them with my dad and most of them with my son, I’ve seen just about everything. But the minute I think I’ve seen everything, that nothing left in this world possesses the capacity to surprise me, I’m confronted with something else that makes me shake my head in utter disbelief. It’s seriously the greatest life I could imagine living.
I’ve dealt with every kind of human imaginable—billionaires and pimps, celebrities and crack whores, prim little old ladies and two-toothed meth addicts. I’ve had a conversation with Bill Clinton in a room with just ten other people, and I’ve battled to the death with some two-bit local politicians who think they’re running the entire world.
I’ve learned a lot for being a tenth-grade dropout. Along the way, I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun. I’ve seen exultation and despair. I’ve been sweet-talked by beautiful women and cursed by tweakers who walk up to our infamous night window trying to convince me to give them $1,000 for their PlayStation games.
This is a big, crazy world, and most of the time I feel like I’m at the epicenter. Endlessly fascinating. It’s impossible to be bored, impossible to be disengaged.
When I was a kid growing up in San Diego, I always loved to sit along the boardwalk in Mission Beach and just watch the people. I could amuse myself for hours that way. That’s another beautiful thing about my job: Now I get to people-watch for a living.
This is the greatest business in the world. Every day is different, every person is different. I’ve always been a spastic, talky guy, and even before Pawn Stars came along and turned our shop into a kaleidoscope of people and cameras, I still would sit around and talk to people all day long. I can argue any side of any issue. I can talk politics forever, and I’ll drive you crazy because I can argue against Republicans and Democrats equally. I’ve always got a better idea.
I don’t judge anybody. There’s room for everybody. My background gives me a unique perspective on people; as you will soon learn, my childhood was one long experiment in proving that smart people can do stupid things. I can relate to just about everybody, including people who are down on their luck and trying to scrape enough money together to get back into the casino to make that next big score. (They always think it’s coming, trust me.)
I’ll always remember a grumpy old lady who wandered through the shop several years ago wearing a judgmental look on her face. This grizzled old gal apparently expected something different from Gold & Silver Pawn, and she expressed her disgust by asking me, “You call this place ‘World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop.’ Tell me: Why is this place ‘World Famous’?”
I laughed a little, shrugged, and said, “Why? Because we put it on the sign, that’s why.”
I can’t claim that Old Man and I had a premonition when we decided to include those two words on the sign. It was probably more wishful thinking than anything else, but twenty-two years later we can lay a claim to being world famous. We have Pawn Stars to thank for that. Our reality show is now shown on History in Australia and Canada, so if that little old lady ever comes back, I’ll have a better answer for her.
If my life is a book—and I guess what you’re reading proves it is—then Las Vegas is a major character in the saga. The place, the people, the politics—all of it weaves together to create a wild tapestry that is often hard to believe.
This is my journey. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s always been fun. Enjoy the ride. Along the way, you’ll hear from my son, Corey, known better as “Big Hoss” because of his size and big personality. And you’ll hear from my dad, known better as “Old Man” because he’s an old man. (True story: He got the nickname when he was in his thirties, because he’s always been an old soul.) You’ll also hear from Austin Russell, the world’s most unlikely television star, known as “Chumlee” because he looks like a cartoon walrus.
If you don’t know how a pawn shop works—and many people in “reputable society” don’t—here’s a primer:
The majority of our business, probably 60 percent, consists of pawns. If someone sells an item, it’s straightforward. They get their money, always in cash, and I get the item. If an item is pawned, it’s a loan. We charge a five-dollar device fee and 10 percent interest per month.
On Pawn Stars, the vast majority of the customers you see are selling, not pawning. There’s a simple reason for that: Most people who are in the position where they have to pawn something don’t want to be shown on television. There’s a stigma attached to it, which is why it’s legally considered a private transaction between the pawnbroker and the customer.
When you pawn an item, you have three options: (1) You can pay the interest each month—say, fifty bucks on a $500 loan—and I’ll keep your stuff indefinitely; (2) you can pick your stuff up by paying the loan and the accrued interest; or (3) you can walk away and never come back, which means you don’t owe me a dime, but your item becomes mine after 120 days and can legally be sold in the shop.
Every transaction, pawn or sale, is downloaded to both the Las Vegas Metro Police Department and Homeland Security. (That’s a little-known aspect of the Patriot Act.) By law, any item I purchase or take on pawn must sit in the shop for a thirty-day waiting period while it is cleared by the police as not stolen.
There’s nothing predictable about life in the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop. Old Man might be grumpy and Chumlee might do something stupid, but the swirl of crazy people and crazy stuff is unending. As I say on the open to the show, “You never know what’s going to come through that door.” All you have to do is spend a little time inside to see how true that statement is.
I’m Rick Harrison, and this is my pawn shop.
CHAPTER 1
The Storm in My Head
I was eight years old, lying on my bed, when the world turned upside down. All of a sudden, no warning, without me moving, the floor became the ceiling and the ceiling became the floor. My head buzzed and crackled like a thousand power lines, and the world tilted on its axis. Slowly at first, then faster, until I was no longer aware of any of it.
I awoke later. I don’t know how much later. I didn’t know what had happened. My tongue felt like hamburger and my body felt as if it had been beaten with hammers. My legs were stiff and painful, my back hurt and my head held the residual buzz of whatever Category 5 electrical storm had struck it.
My parents’ room was downstairs. My only thought
was to get there; they would know how to handle this. My legs were cramped and constricted. I tasted blood from my shredded tongue. I was scared and confused and tired and just so goddamned scared. I got to my parents’ room and knew from the looks on their faces that everything would be different from this point forward.
My first grand mal epileptic seizure, and the countless ones that followed, would define my childhood and much of my life. They struck violently and without warning. They struck mostly at night, and thankfully never at school. They struck with such severe force that I accepted it as a given that I would not live into adulthood.
Surely, at some point, one of these vengeful, raging attacks would cross the line. It would hit with all its wild, paralyzing fury, and I would simply never regain consciousness. From the time the seizures became a regular part of my life, I resigned myself to the idea that they would eventually kill me.
They altered my life in nearly every way. Whenever one hit, I would be out of school for as long as ten days. The muscle pulls were so painful and severe that I could do nothing but lay in bed with ice packs on my hamstrings and quadriceps.
It was there, in that bed in our suburban home in the Mission Valley section of San Diego, that my life changed again. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t move more than a few inches without pain. I didn’t have a television in my room. Video games and iPads hadn’t been invented. I was left to my own devices.
So I read books.
A lot of books.
I fell in love with a series of books called The Great Brain. These were the first books that captured my imagination. Written by John D. Fitzgerald, about a ten-year-old boy named Tom D. Fitzgerald, narrated by a younger brother known as J.D., The Great Brain allowed me to escape into a different world, a world I couldn’t have. I would lose myself inside the pages.
The hero—owner of The Great Brain in question—lived in Utah and had these wonderful adventures that always centered on his ability to conjure a scheme that would make him money. He was a generous schemer, a con artist with a big heart. He’d do things like build a roller coaster in his backyard and charge to let people ride it, but there was always some twist at the end that caused him to have a crisis of conscience and give all the money back.
The Great Brain knew how to do everything: rescue friends who were trapped in a well; help a buddy deal with losing a leg; build that roller coaster. His world was my escape, my entree into a world outside the confines of my bedroom’s four walls. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t go to school. All I had were my ice packs and my books, so I made the best of it.
I have a very analytical, mathematical, calculating mind. I know I’m not supposed to believe in things like karma. But certain things have happened in my life that can’t be explained by simple coincidence. How else can you explain the sequence of events and circumstances that led to me turning those bedridden hours—which should have been the worst hours of my life—into something that would provide a foundation for a life of curiosity and fun?
That’s what happened. That’s how profound the discovery of books was in my life. I didn’t like school, but I loved books. Reading has been the basis of just about everything that came after. In that bed, I fell in love not only with books but with knowledge. The experience tapped into something I might never have found without the trying circumstances that led up to it. So much of the enjoyment I’ve gained from life has stemmed from a book—either researching some arcane item or reading to learn how to do something practical with my hands.
And how about the books I chose to read? Can it be explained away as mere coincidence that I chose a series of books about a kid my age who had an interest in making money and hustling to get it? I guess coincidence could explain it, and you’re welcome to believe that. However, I have my doubts.
I was born in North Carolina, where my parents were raised. Their courtship was unlikely, to say the least. My mom comes from a very proper, accomplished Southern family. Her father was a county judge and eventually became one of the lead attorneys for Philip Morris in North Carolina. I have two cousins on my mom’s side who work for Jet Propulsion Lab. My uncle was one of the lead designers on the space station and does satellite delivery systems. My cousins developed one of the first wireless Internet systems, which they sold for stock in an Internet company, unfortunately for them.
And my dad’s side? Well, you might not be surprised to learn his family was a little less refined. They were dirt-poor white trash, left to survive on their wits for the most part. My dad was always a hustler, that’s for sure. Old Man drove the school bus when he was fourteen. It apparently was legal to do that in North Carolina back in the 1950s. That was the law: You had to be at least fourteen years old to drive the school bus. Can you imagine an eighteen-year-old being allowed to do that now? Old Man got paid for it, of course—five or six dollars a week. He parked the bus at his house every night; he got up in the morning, picked up all the kids, and then parked the bus at the school during the school hours. When school got out, he would drop the kids off and park the bus at home.
But he wasn’t always a pillar of responsibility. When he was seventeen, my dad stole a car, and he got caught. He appeared before the judge, and the judge said, “Son, do you want to go to jail or the military?” I assume my dad, pragmatic guy that he is, didn’t waste a lot of time pondering this one. He chose the military.
My parents met at a barn dance when they were seventeen, before my dad left to join the navy. How’s that for Americana? My mom was dragged to this dance by her friends—she had no interest in going—and when she saw my dad, she was attracted to him because he was really, really tan from working construction jobs. She thought he was Latin, if you can believe that. If she’d known he was a backwoods hick, she might have never spoken to him.
* * * *
I was born in 1965, and we moved to San Diego when I was two, after my dad was transferred by the navy. There was hardship in my family before I was diagnosed with epilepsy, which might have something to do with how I handled it. The Harrisons were stoic, not big on feeling sorry for ourselves. There was some history behind that, too.
My parents were eighteen when they married, and because this was the 1950s, she got pregnant almost immediately. They had a daughter, my sister Sherry, who was born with Down syndrome. My dad had been in the navy for three years around the time Sherry was born, and when her medical bills became too expensive for the family to keep up, he reenlisted for the health care benefits. Sherry died at six years old, when I was two, so I never really knew her.
We lived in the Mission Valley area, not far from Jack Murphy Stadium. If you take away the unfortunate grand mal epileptic seizures, it was a comfortable, happy childhood. People are surprised when I tell them I wasn’t taunted or teased for my epilepsy, but I wasn’t. My brother Joe was a typically vicious older brother, so I knew how to fight, but mostly my friends were just my friends. They accepted me for what I was, and they really didn’t look at me any differently. I missed chunks of school in the wake of my seizures, but when I came back we took up where we left off. I don’t have any indelible scars. At least I don’t think I do. Others might disagree.
San Diego is the ultimate navy town, and when we moved there in 1967 it was beginning to boom. It was a different world for my parents—faster pace, more opportunity—and my mom took advantage by getting her real estate license and opening an office in 1970. You couldn’t help but make money in real estate in San Diego around that time.
As you might expect from a future pawnbroker, my dad also ran various businesses on the side. He bought and sold gold, and he helped my mom with the real estate business. One of my fondest memories is going around on Saturday mornings with my dad and working on old, decrepit houses he and my mom picked up as rental units. We did everything ourselves, and some of these places probably should have been condemned.
Hustling was nothing new for the Old Man. Back in the day—my dad says “back in the day” for anythin
g that happened before last week—he served as a paymaster on navy ships. As he tells it, it was nearly a physical impossibility for sailors to make their money last from one payday to the next. Every time the ship docked, they’d be out of money. So my dad figured he’d make this work to his advantage. He let it be known that he could provide loans to broke sailors. Remember, this was long before payday advance stores, and long before he had any idea he was going to be a famous Las Vegas pawnbroker and television star.
His deal was simple, and as old as money itself: He would give them an advance on their next check, lay out the terms of the interest, and then take his share—the interest, or vig—out of the next check. He made a good amount of side income on the deal, and there were times when he had to take a truck down to the pier to bring home the stuff he acquired on his trips through exotic spots like Southeast Asia and Europe.
He brought home toys for us kids, jewelry for my mom. We had a sweet Sony stereo before anyone I knew. Old Man was a pawnbroker before he was a pawnbroker.
There were nights on the ship when Old Man would tell everyone he was having a blackjack game in his room. Because the men were bored to tears living on a ship, he’d never have trouble filling out a game. Well, it turns out he wasn’t really playing blackjack; he was the dealer. He was dealing the cards and making all kinds of money and nobody thought much of it. Sometimes sailors would lose big and start complaining about the cash, and he’d ask them what else they might have to pay him with. One time a guy said, “I just bought my wife a new set of china in Hong Kong.”
License to Pawn: Deals, Steals, and My Life at the Gold & Silver Page 1
