We pay our people good. I’ve had other pawnbrokers chew me out because I pay my people too much. We give them full medical. We give them bonuses. We try to treat them well.
It used to cost me five thousand a day in overhead just to open that front door. Since we got a television show, it costs me ten thousand a day. More customers, more sales, more security, more employees. It’s all good in the end. One thing that gets lost in the glitz and glamour of the television show: It’s goddamned hard work to run a business like this and make it as successful as we have.
Now that people have seen the show, they want to know what we’re like as people, how we interact as a family.
Rick and I have a good rapport. I respect him and he respects me.
He’ll tell you he runs the store, I’ll tell you I run it.
Together we’ve taken the pawn industry from a gray-area business to Middle America. The television show has legitimized our business. All the pawnbrokers love the show because we display it exactly how it is.
There is no college for creating pawnbrokers. You’re going to make mistakes, and you’re going to find yourself in the position where you’re standing there with a dumb look on your face while you stare at something that you’ve never seen before. And you’ll have no idea what the hell it is.
My answer is usually to buy the damn thing. I’m a pack rat. Rick and I have our differences about that sometimes. I always want more.
My role on the show is to be an old grump, and I guess that’s pretty true. Nobody thought Pawn Stars was going to mushroom like it has. We didn’t think so, History didn’t think so. We thought we’d get a couple of years out of it and be happy. But Leftfield Pictures put together a great format, and it works. They’ve done a great job of transferring what we do to television.
Any family business creates jealousies, and if you add the money and attention you get from a television show, it’s bound to be worse. So yes, we’ve got our jealousies in the family. Rick’s older brother Joe is feeling it, and Rick’s son Adam is a little envious of Corey’s newfound fame. It’s natural for people to feel that way, but this entire television experience feels like one big fluke. Rick always wanted a show—there were many times I thought he was crazy—but nobody can say we planned it out this way. Damned thing just happened.
There are a lot of older people who love the show, but they’re more interested in getting the people from eighteen to fifty-four years old. They’re the ones spending money. My wife can’t understand why I’m not getting all the personal appearances that the other guys are getting. Rick and Corey and Chumlee are appearing at casinos and traveling around to trade shows to collect appearance fees. I understand it—it’s demographics. Nothing surprising about that.
Besides, I had never watched a reality show until I was starring in one.
When people ask me what I think about all this attention, I tell them the same thing every time:
We’ll ride this horse till it dies, and then we’ll cut a steak off its ass.
CHAPTER 6
It’s Just Stuff
I wore a fake Rolex on my wrist for five years to remind me that I’m not always as smart as I think I am. The fake was no one’s fault but my own; I bought it, so I wore it.
One day fifteen years ago, a guy came in with the watch, and it seemed like a pretty straightforward transaction. I looked it over, it was a Rolex, and I gave him $5,000 for it. Even then, I considered myself to be something of an expert in fakes. I knew what I was doing, I knew what to look for, and I knew how to detect the slightest difference between the real thing and a facsimile. If I didn’t, I would have been out of business.
Usually, I can look at something for a few seconds and point out ten different inconsistencies that indicate a fake. If you see enough of them, and I do, it becomes almost second nature. There are certain aspects of a watch—whether it’s a Rolex or a Patek Philippe or one of the other high-enders—that are unique to the maker. They’re little trademarks that separate the best watches from good watches, and those signature marks make life easier for people like me who have to be on the lookout for scammers trying to sell fakes.
You have to remember: There are people out there whose sole purpose in life—for fun and profit—is to go around trying to screw over pawn shops. They’re out there, and guys like me have to look out for them.
But until the moment this particular watch came through the door, I was unaware just how far some people will go to produce a fake Rolex.
This watch had a 1970s Rolex movement, which means someone bought a beatup Rolex from the seventies for probably $700 or $800. They took the movement out of that watch and put a new dial on it, then new hands on it, then new crystal. All of these were legitimate Rolex parts, so on first glance there was no way of telling this was a phony watch.
But here’s the crazy part: They made an eighteen-carat case and band. They did such a good job that it was difficult to tell the difference. I had checked out the internals first—they’re usually the first place a fake is exposed. Since this one checked out internally, I got complacent and gave a cursory check to the rest of the watch. And that’s how I completely missed out on the fake case and band.
By making such a refined fake, these guys weren’t working with the same margins as someone who was trying to pawn off a $500 fake as real. The cheap fakes, if they’re successful, can turn a 1,000 percent profit. The problem, of course, is finding someone who will be fooled enough to hand over $5,000. The smart guys can walk into our shop, look into our cases, and immediately realize we’re not the kind of place that will be easily bamboozled by a cheap fake. (Although when Corey was working the night window his first few weeks on the job, it was a different story. Now, however, we’d like to think we’ve closed that loophole.)
A lot of fakes are easy to spot. Some are just versions of old scams. I still occasionally get people trying to pull the old “White Van Speaker Scam.” This one is a classic, and it’s been around so long I’m left to conclude it has worked on enough people to keep it going.
It works like this: Guys troll the streets, almost always in a white work van, looking for someone who looks like they can afford to buy some new in-home speakers. (Or a pawn shop, where they think we’ll buy anything.) They get your attention and then proceed to give a grand performance, telling you how they’ve fallen into this sweet deal on speakers. They just finished an installation and they found they have speakers left over. These speakers sell for $4,000, but instead of giving them back, they’re willing to sell them to you for just $400.
They have glossy brochures detailing all the features of the speakers. They sound and look legitimate. They have delivery invoices and business cards. It’s a very organized scam—but it’s a scam. The speakers are worth maybe $40 a pair.
The watch I wore as a reminder was by far the best fake I’d ever seen. And it didn’t come cheap. By the time they were finished, they probably had put $2,500 to $3,000 into this watch, and I bought it for $5,000. It was smart for them—they came close to doubling their money—but it blew me away that someone would go to such extraordinary lengths to pull this off.
Wearing the watch had the desired effect. Every time I glanced at it, it screamed out at me: You don’t know everything!
And besides, it was a decent watch to wear around.
You know, it was sort of a Rolex.
The semi-fake Rolex was also a reminder to me that I can’t know everything. It’s like the serenity prayer; you have to accept the things you cannot know. I might try to read and study as much as I can about a million different diverse topics, but certain things are simply impossible. Those things drive me crazy.
Take Confederate swords. There are so many fakes out there you can’t truly tell the difference. Confederate swords are unique because they were of such poor quality from the beginning. It’s like there never really were new or authentic Confederate swords.
There was next to zero manufacturing in the South. Confe
derate soldiers were carrying around Union swords that somehow found their way into their hands. The South also bought all kinds of weapons, including swords, from the English. These used swords, a lot of them broken and battered, would be sent over from England, and the Confederate soldiers were putting the CSA emblem on themselves. They would take a piece of metal, coat the back in wax, and push it onto the sword. From there, they would pour muriatic acid over the top, and it would etch the initials CSA onto the sword.
If this was a legitimate etching, done in 1861, it wouldn’t look any different than an etching that was done a year ago. The age of the sword could be determined, but the emblem is another story. There’s really no way of telling the difference. I can’t tell you how much that annoys a guy like me.
One of my employees, the one we call “Shrek,” came in one day with three signed documents, one each from George Washington, James Monroe, and Herbert Hoover. I’m sitting in the office with my dad, and Shrek says, “The guy says he wants thirteen thousand dollars for the three of them.”
Old Man says, “That’s nice of him. Tell him no. I ain’t gonna pay no thirteen thousand dollars. I’ll pay five.”
That’s a typical negotiation tactic from my dad. If I offer someone $3,000 for an item and they counter with $4,000, there’s a good chance Old Man is going pipe in with $2,000. It’s just who he is. In contrast to my dad, I go into a different kind of work mode. I get quiet and start looking at the signed papers to see what I think of them, if I can find any obvious problems that might indicate they’re fakes.
Shrek says, “He says he wants to sell them, so he’s going to leave his information—”
“Is he local?” I ask.
Old Man says, “Just go out there and buy ’em, Rick.”
I’m still looking.
“Hold on a second,” I tell my dad.
“The Monroe one is in pretty rough condition,” Shrek says. “It looks like it got wet and the ink faded through onto the other side.”
I’m still quiet. I honestly don’t know how much time passes while this is happening. I don’t really hear the conversation around me. I love these moments; it’s like a puzzle to me.
I point to the Washington paper. “I’ll give him five grand for that one,” I say. “But I need to get someone in here to verify the signatures.”
Then I turn to the Monroe document. I look at it for a few minutes and say, “I can almost one hundred percent guarantee you this is one hundred percent bullshit fake.”
The ink was a modern ink. On the George Washington paper, the ink had turned brown. The coloring in old ink was black with iron filings. When it oxidizes, it turns brown. On the Monroe paper, the ink remained black. That made it suspect—the ink at that time wouldn’t have retained its color.
My job is to be naturally skeptical. I can’t assume that all three items are valid just because one is. I can’t ever take something on face value, because that’s when I’ll get burned.
That’s what some sellers don’t understand. They can come in with a signed letter from a president that looks legitimate, and to a certain point it is. The age of the item checks out, the stationery checks out, but you have to know more than that. Presidents are busy people; very often letters and things that are less official are signed by secretaries. You know, “Here’s a stack of letters. Sign them for the President.”
Letters signed by secretaries are essentially worthless. And the other thing I have to deal with is a fundamental fact of business: The people who are going to come into my shop and be interested in buying an extremely expensive piece of history are savvy enough to know the difference between a secretary’s signature and a president’s signature. They wouldn’t be serious collectors, with serious bank accounts, if they weren’t. So what that means is a seller who is interested in getting some money for a very cool piece of memorabilia isn’t seeing the world from the same vantage point I am.
I like the stories behind the items as much—if not more—than the items themselves. Walking around the shop, I look at this stuff as living history. It presents a narrative of a time, place, and people vastly different from how we live now. That’s why the shop, to me, could be viewed as one of the most eclectic museums around.
There are great stories behind and under every piece of glass in the building, but my ormolu clocks are some of my favorites. I have three of them right now, and if you walked around the showroom you probably wouldn’t pick them to be among the most fascinating and history-filled pieces in the shop. They’re about eighteen inches tall and a foot wide, but the story they tell is far bigger.
Ormolu means “crushed gold” in French, and these clocks were made in the early 1800s throughout France by mercury gilders whose patience and precision would be difficult to duplicate in our modern world.
And there’s this fact, too: These clockmakers died for their work.
They started with a brass body, which was then soaked in mercury nitrate—a mercury and nitric acid mixture. The nitric acid etched the brass and allowed the mercury to adhere to the body of the clock. At this point, it looked silver, like mercury. Alchemists discovered hundreds of years ago, probably before the Roman Empire, that gold and silver would be sucked into mercury, and the next step in the process called for the clockmakers to take gold amalgam (crushed gold mixed with mercury) and dab it onto the body of the clock.
They would dab this mixture, which had the consistency of a liquidy paste, onto the clock for days and days. Eventually, the gold started transferring onto the clock. After this painstaking process, there were probably five or six grams of gold attached to the clock.
Handling this amount of mercury with no safeguards—no gloves, masks, nothing—seems suicidal on its own. However, this wasn’t the worst these guys had to endure. After the dabbing step was done, they put the clock—or whatever they were gilding—into an oven to burn off the mercury and create the brilliant gold finish that is the hallmark of the ormolu clock.
These gilders breathed those mercury fumes until the mercury was completely removed from the clock. Mercury poisoning is about the worst thing you can imagine. It’s a hideous death.
The gilders rarely lived to be forty years old. Most of them lost their minds far sooner. They didn’t know any better, but it’s sobering to wonder how many of these guys died before someone made the connection between their deaths and their occupation.
Mercury gilding was outlawed by the 1850s, so these clocks will never be duplicated. Thankfully. I call these clocks “Ormolu Death Clocks” because of the story behind them. They’re roughly $15,000 apiece, and they also sell a lot better with a tag that calls them death clocks.
For one thing, it makes anyone who is interested ask why the clocks are called that.
And for another, I get to tell them a story.
I’ve got some other favorites, too. One of the most iconic pieces we have in the shop is a painting of Jim Morrison by Denny Dent. You see it behind the counter on nearly every show. It’s one of the first things people recognize when they walk into the shop, and it’s one of the most photographed. I have two Denny Dents in the shop: Morrison and Bob Marley.
Dent is a fascinating story. He worked in a Carlos Murphy’s in Lake Tahoe and painted live in the restaurant. He was a speed painter—he painted portraits in less than five minutes and got paid $50 a night by the restaurant and whatever he could get for his paintings. He painted on a roll of construction paper, and he just painted as many portraits as he could in a night. He’d take $10 or $20 for a painting, or he’d just paint in exchange for his bar bill.
Most of his Carlos Murphy’s paintings were thrown away as soon as the people got home. Nobody knew this guy who was painting for a bar bill in a Mexican-Irish chain restaurant was going to end up being anything more than a novelty act, like a guy walking around twisting balloons into animal shapes.
Celebrities were Dent’s passion. John Lennon’s murder hit him hard, and he traveled to New York to attend a vigil.
While he was there, as sort of a memorial to Lennon, he did a speed painting of Lennon at the vigil. People were amazed. Outside of the confines of a chain restaurant, his work was seen as something innovative and pure. The trip to New York changed Dent’s life. Eventually, he gave performances that he called his “Two-Fisted Art Attack.” He painted with both hands and played music while he painted. He could finish a painting in three songs. He was unique, and what he produced was remarkable considering the way he produced it.
Dent died in 2004, and I bought his paintings while he was still alive. Art is such a weird thing, because you end up with a much more valuable piece after someone dies. That’s a creepy thing to profit from, but it’s true nonetheless.
I think I paid $1,000 for the Morrison painting, and right now it’s listed as “Not For Sale” in the shop. The other one is yours for $30,000.
There was a time when I had three Dent paintings. The third, a portrait of Jimi Hendrix, came off pawn one day in the summer of 2010 and it was purchased the day it came off. The buyer? I gave Chumlee a screaming deal and let him have it for $3,500. I can understand him liking the painting, but Chumlee being Chumlee, he’s not being especially smart with his money.
We used to have a custom jewelry department in the pawn shop. We had jewelers who made jewelry to order, and it was quite an experience before we became too busy to keep it going. The most famous piece we made in the shop was a pimp’s ring that was shaped like a king’s crown. Back in the nineties, crown rings were all the rage among pimps. It was a sign of belonging to the club, because if you were wearing a crown ring you were announcing to everybody that you were, indeed, a pimp.
Well, the pimp who commissioned the crown ring wanted to be the pimpiest of pimps, because this ring was the most amazingly hideous thing you could imagine. It was like the crown on the Imperial margarine package. Each corner of the crown had a diamond coming off it, and it was huge. It was literally like wearing a shotglass on your finger.
License to Pawn: Deals, Steals, and My Life at the Gold & Silver Page 9
