As we have moved deeper into the twenty first century issues relating to the environment have become more and more important. As certain resources become less plentiful, people have had to adapt and do their best to get the most out of anything that they have. Some people do this by having recyclable bags or reusable bags when they go to the grocery store so that they don’t have to use a paper or plastic carrying apparatus. Along these same lines, although the connection is admittedly somewhat tenuous, there are things that citizens can do in the commercial world to get the most out of anything they have. One such action that people take to make sure resources aren’t wasted is pawn things at pawn shops, or in other words sell them to somebody who is going to sell them again. One instance of pawning is on the show Pawn Stars, which has aired for three seasons on the History channel on cable TV, and the following paragraphs will describe the show and talk about some of the more interesting things that have been sold at the pawn shop.
The show Pawn Stars involves a family that runs a pawn shop in the Las Vegas downtown. The main characters on the show are Rick, his dad who is called the Old Man, and Rick’s son Corey who often goes by the nickname Big Hoss. Also on the show is a man who has been at the shop for seven years, named Chumlee who has turned into a close family friend through working at the store. For those who don’t know, a pawn shop is basically a collection of other people’s junk. People bring things into the store and haggle with the store owner on a price to pay for it if they want to sell it, or they can pawn it and leave it at the store for a while and get money loaned from the store owner with the thing as collateral. If an item that has been pawned is left for a certain amount of time, the owner of the store takes the item and sells it on to another customer.
Another fascinating aspect of the show Pawn Stars is when customers decide to try and trade something they want to sell for something that is already in the store. Yesterday an episode was shown in which a man brought in a double barrel gun from the 18th century, which was so ornate that it even had a bayonet attached to it via a spring. While at first the store owner Rick and the gun owner couldn’t come to an agreement on a fair price to pay for the gun, the gun owner wanted to purchase a guitar with the money that he got from the gun and eventually left the store having traded the gun for a special edition guitar that he found at the shop.
Because it’s such a crazy mix of things, many times people bring items to the pawn shop that are really cool and rare. For instance, on one episode of the show a person brought in a baseball shirt that had been signed by legendary baseball player Lou Gherig. Since the item had the needed certificates of authentication, the original owner of the jersey ended up getting a few thousand dollars for the item and left as a happy customer.
Pawn Stars is a fascinating show which teaches people both lessons on how to bargain and often times a brief lesson in history when discussing the merits of an item that a customer has brought in to sell.