Quite a few chancers have walked through the doors of the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop over the years. Like that guy who tried to flog an old gun-shaped cigarette lighter for $5,000 but ended up taking 50 bucks (nice try, though).

But Rick Harrison and the boys have also dealt with some real high rollers, brandishing items valuable enough to make the soundtrack do that record scratch thing. And you know things are serious when you hear that record scratch thing.

Price tag: $750,000 

Rick Harrison was as excited as a kid on Christmas morning when a guy strolled into the pawnshop with Jimi Hendrix’s 1963 Fender Stratocaster guitar. Rick caressed it and practically started calling it his preciousss, while a guitar expert declared the item to be 'stupid cool' (a technical antique dealing term), so the seller must have felt confident he’d get his $750,000 asking price. But Rick’s $550,000 offer was anything but music to his ears, and he walked. 

Price tag: $1 million

It’s fair to say The Beatles were not entirely inconsequential to the history of rock music. So it was pretty exciting when someone brought in the original 1962 contract between the band members and manager Brian Epstein, and asked if Rick might, you know, be interested in buying it at all? Some CGI-style analysis of the signatures proved they were the real deal, but Rick balked at the million-buck tag. The seller missed a trick by not singing “You Never Give Me Your Money” as he walked out of there.

Price tag: $1 million

A million is a lot of money, but what if it means owning your very own giant killer robot? Suddenly it seems an entirely reasonable price, if you ask us. But the boys still passed on the Robosaurus, which could literally crush cars in its giant metal gnashers. Fun fact: it appeared in a 1989 TV pilot about a cop with the superpower of being able to blow his dead son’s toy robot up into a gigantic tool of righteous vengeance. Here’s hoping Netflix gives it the gritty reboot it deserves.

Price tag: $1.25 million

Yes, this was the actual white Ford Bronco which OJ Simpson tried to flee the cops in after being charged with two murders. The car chase was filmed live and watched by an estimated 95 million people worldwide, so Rick looked understandably ready to pinch himself as he got behind the wheel and took it for a spin. Despite this, the grisly context of its fame meant he had to pass (plus, just check out that price tag).

Price tag: $2.5 million

Rick looked ready to shed a tear when he was presented with a silk suit once worn by the first president of the United States of America. The initial asking price was $3 million, but Rick couldn’t bring himself to cough up even when it dropped to $2.5 million. Still, he at least got to bask in its almost holy presence, and besides – as Rick himself put it – 'it didn’t fit me anyway.'

BLAZE: What inspired you to open the shop?

Rick Harrison: Around 16 years ago, I decided if I get one of these reality shows, it'll probably be good for business. So I pitched the show and eventually got it on television. But for years, everyone kept telling me that no one's ever going to want to watch a show about four bad guys and a bunch of antiques. 

BLAZE: Since 1989, when the shop opened, what are the biggest changes you've noticed over time?

Rick Harrison: Like Darwinism, you evolve or you die. The volume of customers has just changed dramatically. Before I had the show I used to get about 100 customers a day, then that grew to more a thousand customers a day. And now with Coronavirus, that number has changed significantly.

BLAZE: What would you say has been the weirdest item that you've ever sold?

Rick Harrison: Okay well, this guy comes in the shop with three human skulls in a duffel bag.

It turned out he went to dental school and they used to use real human skills, and he bought a bunch of them at an auction. I obviously couldn't buy them, there'd be 10 cop cars in the parking lot.

Also, someone in the UK tried to sell me this coffin with an air pump on it, they gave them to new mothers during World War II, and there was a pump to make sure the babies didn' get gas. 

BLAZE: What was the rarest item that you've come across? 

Rick Harrison: I have a 12th century stained glass window in my house, it's from the UK. 

I also have an eighth-century Viking bracelet that was founded in a Viking gourd in a field in England and I wear it all the time. 

BLAZE: Do you ever buy off items for yourself?

Rick Harrison: Well, I've been a really big book collector, I collect a lot of the books that you see on the show. I've even just bought one in Italy for $100,000. I'm a mega nerd!

I went out with John Merrick and Katy Perry one night and I didn't even know who Katy Perry was. That's how much of a nerd I am. 

BLAZE: Do you have any negotiation tips?

Rick Harrison: Be willing to walk away!. If you're not willing to walk away, the other person's just dictating the price to you. You need to know when to walk away from the deal if it doesn't feel right, even if you really want that item. Your business's reputation is everything! 

BLAZE: Have you ever come across a really difficult customer?

Rick Harrison: A lot! There's normally a lot of people that come in with their family heirloom and they were told that grandma's got a perfect diamond ring. And then I have to explain to them; 'No, grandma was cheap.' It's a fake!

BLAZE: Who has been your favourite visitor to the shop?

Rick Harrison: It has to be Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top

BLAZE: When would you say is the best time in the year for pawning items?

Rick Harrison: Definitely the Chrismas period! People are looking for bargains everywhere. 

Here's a crazy fact... "there's no such thing as a used diamond". So there's always a very good chance your newly bought diamonds were already in a pawn shop. 

BLAZE: If you were president for a day, what law would you pass and why?

Rick Harrison: I would set up a voucher system and any kid can go to any school they want to go to. The government shouldn't be running the school systems. It's an issue because education is so important. 

BLAZE: And is it true that you pitched an idea for a documentary series on the White House? 

Rick Harrison: Yes, I wanted to do a reality show documentary series on the blue-collar workgroup at the White House. I wanted to know more about all those jobs in the White House that no one knows about. 

MARY NZEH

What have you got hidden away in your loft, basement, storage unit, shed or garage? If you’re anything like us, the chances are you’ve plenty of stuff stashed away all over the place. And if you really are like us, almost all of it will be absolute rubbish.

For most of us, the things we hide away are dull: tatty furniture, broken tools, musty Christmas decorations, dreary old photo albums of long-forgotten holidays... That’s not the case on Pawn Stars, however.

In the Blaze show, the owners of the famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas - the Harrison family - welcome anyone who has something interesting and potentially valuable to sell. They evaluate the thing and, if there's money to be made, make them an offer. More often than not, the items brought in are more than a little intriguing...

To celebrate this year's Halloween, let’s take a look back at some of the scariest items ever sold on Pawn Stars, shall we?

The season 13 episode Silver Stash Pawn saw a chap called Jad stroll in with something you don't see on the shelves of too many pawn shops... An Ancient Egyptian death mask. It was made of something called ‘cartonnage’ (a kind of paper-mâché made from papyrus) and dated all the way back to the second century BC. 

Jad was a little cagey about where he got the creepy as heck funeral mask from, but was a whole lot less cagey about how much he wanted for it (a cool $70,000). Corey called in his eccentric archaeologist college professor pal Dr. Phineas Kastle to give the mask the once-over. Doc Phineas confirmed it was legit and the negotiations began. A deal was struck at 30 grand and the boys took receipt of the millennia-old death mask that's - let’s face it - almost certainly cursed.

The boys in the shop have seen plenty of swords land on their countertops over the years. But few have come with such a gruesome back story and prompted such horror as the giant curved blade that a lad called Ryan brought in for their consideration in the season four, episode 25 episode ‘Silent and Deadly’.

Dull, dirty and scythe-like, Rick wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the iron weapon, so he did what any good TV pawn shop guy would do and called an expert. So in came Sean - a whizz with antique armour - and an explanation was soon forthcoming. The sword was from mid-19th century Congo. Its purpose? To lop off human heads…

Actually.

It was a BEHEADING SWORD.

A price of $225 was agreed upon and all without a single noggin being sliced off. A result for all concerned, we’re sure you agree. 

How creepy can a book be?! Well, it depends on what book we’re talking about. A dog-eared copy of The Hungry Caterpillar’s not likely to put the willies up many folk. But an early dust-covered copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula from 1897, signed by the author himself, just might be.

The classic dark Gothic tome was featured in the season four episode 'High Stakes', but while it was old and signed, it wasn't a first edition. So the spooky novel only saw Big Hoss prepared to splash out $2,350 to its owner Mark.

 Nowadays, thankfully, blood transfusions are quick, painless and sanitary affairs. However, as with most medical procedures, they have their roots in barbarism. Chumlee found this out (the easy way, luckily enough for him) in episode 25 of series 5 when a lady called Artie came in to see him.

Two glass bottles, some rubber tubing and a foot pump were all Artie brought in. Together the items made up a rudimentary blood transfusion kit manufactured by a company called CM Sorenson & Co. It was a set-up that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory.

$125 was agreed upon and the Gold & Silver boys had taken receipt of yet another seriously creepy bit of kit to haunt their shelves before making them a profit.

If we had any of those things in our possession, we’d be looking to get rid of them as well...

Anyone who watches Pawn Stars will know three key things about Rick Harrison. One, he’s a savvy entrepreneur. Two, he’s a master haggler. Three, if you spray-painted him purple, he would look exactly and precisely like iconic Marvel supervillain Thanos (which is why it was pretty exciting when someone brought an Infinity Gauntlet prop into the shop that time).

But this is just scratching the surface of all things Rick. Here are some other highly important facts all fans should know about the big guy.

Yep, Rick has come a long way since he and his dad founded their shop back in 1989.

Thanks to the runaway success of Pawn Stars, he’s now rich. Proper, 'I have 29 cars' rich (that’s an actual quote by the way). While he’s always been ambitious operator, he never imagined how what a phenomenon the show would become. 'I was hoping to get a season or two to help our business,' he once said in an interview. 'I never thought we'd be in 152 countries and 38 languages.'

Brace yourself for an origin story worthy of a movie. When Rick was a young boy, he was stricken with epilepsy. Severe, debilitating epilepsy which made him feel like a 'thousand power lines' were zapping and crackling inside his skull, and confined him to bed for weeks at a time. 

In those pre-Netflix, pre-Playstation, pre-YouTube-rabbit-hole days, bed-ridden Rick devoured books. Lots of books, particularly John D Fitzgerald’s 'The Great Brain' series, about a plucky kid’s zany money-making schemes. Think Del Boy, only younger and more from Utah. Reading about this prepubescent entrepreneur had a huge impact on Rick’s world view, encouraging him to pursue his own business success. Imagine if Harry Potter had been around then; Rick would presumably be some sort of warlock now. 

Think Pawn Stars was Rick’s first time on telly? Well, you wouldn’t just be wrong – you’d be wrong twice. Rick and the pawn shop were filmed for a PBS documentary way back in 2001. Then, in 2003, an episode of Comedy Central’s Insomniac series saw comedian Dave Attell take a tour of the shop. The footage is on YouTube, so you can see how different Rick looked back then (while also having the terrible realisation that 2003 is now so far in the past, it’s basically like watching a Dickens adaptation). 

We know Rick always thinks big. But he really went all the way a few years ago, when he came up with the idea of a documentary set in the White House. 'I wanted to talk to the gardeners, the housekeepers, the curator of all the historical items around the White House,' he later said in an interview. This wasn’t just some passing shower thought either – Rick used his celebrity clout to pitch the idea to the White House Director of Strategic Communications. Sadly, it didn’t come to anything, so we’ll just have to wait until Rick gets even bigger clout by becoming Governor of Nevada. On that point…

Rick has openly pondered the prospect of a career in politics, although he also recently said he was 'leaning towards no'. One thing he definitely won’t be doing is running for mayor, for an excellent reason. 'The city council meetings would drive me crazy.'

 Listen to them talk and you'd think that the lads at the World Famous Gold and Silver Pawn Shop on the Las Vegas strip know everything. Yet while the Pawn Stars crew are smart cookies, sometimes the prize items they covert and buy are worth less than a packet of double chocolate chip Marylands and they get ripped off. Sometimes that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

Other times, the guys spot the fakes and know better than to part with cash for the fakery. Being a pawn shop in the most money-thirsty city on Earth, plenty of forgeries have come through the doors of the shop over the years...

Here are some of the most memorable:

50 million years old. Cor, that’s old, innit? Like, really, REALLY old. Imagine owning a piece of Baltic amber with a perfectly preserved tarantula inside that’s 50 million years old. And then imagine being told that it’s a fake made entirely of plastic.

That was the reality some poor sucker called Madison had to face back in 2014. Even the authentication papers he had from a professional entomologist (insect nerd) were fake. 

Maddy had wanted fifty grand for it. He got… nothing. He didn’t leave the store with nothing, though. He actually left with minus two hundred dollars after paying for the ‘gemstone’ to be professionally examined by the Gemological Institute of America. Bless.

Not only was Beatle John Lennon a top drawer musical artist, the man was also a pretty talented artist-artist. He went to art school and everything. Being one of the world’s most famous ever men and, well, dead - his drawings are now worth a pretty penny. 

Forgeries of his drawings, however, are worth significantly less.

The series 13 episode ‘Under Pressure’ saw a very proud music fan bring in his ‘very rare signed John Lennon artwork’. The drawings consisted of six miniature pen-drawn self-portraits which the buyer picked up for a cool $10 from a charity shop. But you know that saying about things being ‘too good to be true?’ Well, yep. That.

The guy wanted $20k. Rick was keen but before he was willing to talk numbers, he gave the thing a look. Something was off about the paper… then he realised. It was Kodak printer paper. Something which didn’t exist in John Lennon’s lifetime. It was a fake. As for the customer? It was a hard day’s luck.

Claude Monet was a French artist who was born in 1840 and generally regarded by the art world as being one of the founder members of the hugely influential Impressionist movement. His paintings sell for tens of millions and adorn the walls of some of the world’s most prestigious galleries. They generally don’t find themselves being hawked in Vegas pawn shops.

So when one found its way into the store, it was - of course - a forgery. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be featuring it here, would we? How did the expert know? Well, it was surprisingly easy to tell, as it goes. The back of the canvas was clean. Meaning no paint had seeped through. The materials that Monet used would have bled through. It was a fugazi. 

If you had a ‘one in a million’ item, how much would you want for it? Exactly, you’d want one million for it. That’s what the cock-sure chap who strolled into the shop with a framed photograph of Abraham and Mary Lincoln wanted. A cool one million bucks.

Now the fellas in the shop were never going to hand over a mil, but they admired the seller’s chutzpah and bartering strategy. They were keen but, as they sensibly do, they wanted proof that the snap was genuine. So they called in an expert who examined it and, using special facial recognition software, the woman deemed it a fake. 

The man with the photo was faced with the prospect of changing his asking price from $1m to around the price of a cup of coffee. He did no such thing, though. Instead, he did what any optimistic gambler does in Sin City after losing a hand and decided to double down. 

He refuses to believe the expert, opting to tell her instead that, in fact, he is more of an expert than she is. 'It's your career,' he tells her. 'You have the right to discredit yourself if you want to.' 

The dude left empty-handed. Well, not entirely empty. He was holding a totally worthless fake photograph of Abe Lincoln.

Presidents, eh? They’ve been quite the colourful bunch, and we’re not just talking about Donald Trump’s skin complexion. Take Abraham Lincoln, who was a competitive wrestler in his younger years. Then there was Warren Harding, who infamously had sex with his mistress in a White House wardrobe. We should also mention President Lyndon Johnson’s penchant for holding meetings with aides while sitting on the toilet (and there’s you thinking office Zoom calls can be awkward).

While Rick Harrison and co haven’t received any memorabilia connected to these particular stories – Lincoln’s leotards, say, or Lyndon Johnson’s can of Febreze – they’ve certainly had their pick of presidential items in Pawn Stars. To commemorate this year’s not-at-all-divisive-or-bonkers US election, let’s look back at six of the most fascinating to turn up on the show.

Proving that tacky merchandising tat isn’t just a modern phenomenon, this 19th Century 'inauguration handkerchief' commemorating President Benjamin Harrison raised smiles in the pawn shop. But that was only because Rick Harrison and his clan are apparently distant descendants of the president – the item itself really wasn’t worth very much. Still, it does make you hold out hope for other unlikely inauguration-themed memorabilia that might be out there. An Obama inauguration shoehorn perhaps? A Nixon inauguration blancmange mould? Here’s hoping.

Lincoln’s definitely one of the top-end, Taste the Difference presidents, quite unlike the many others who’ve fallen into obscurity (we’re looking at you, Millard Fillmore). This means anything tied to Honest Abe is highly collectable, which is why Rick Harrison was understandably excited about an actual photo signed by actual Lincoln. And not just any old photo, but the very photo that was the basis for Lincoln image featured on the one cent coin. 'Please for the love of God take my money,' Rick almost-but-didn’t-quite-say, purchasing the pic for a hefty $100,000.

When a lady walked into the store clutching a film can simply labelled “FDR, 1882 – 1945”, there were high hopes it contained rare, never-seen footage of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only US president to be elected four times. Unfortunately, it turned out to contain not-rare, highly-seen-before footage that was already in the public domain. And if that proved frustrating for the seller and the Pawn Star boys alike, it was nothing compared to…

When is a chair more than a chair? When it’s Abraham Lincoln’s dining chair which he rested his god-like backside on. Faced with the exquisite bit of vintage furniture, Rick was keen to check if this was the real deal or, to use another President’s favourite phrase, fake news. He brought in an expert and bluntly asked him, 'Is there a possibility that Abraham Lincoln’s butt touched this chair?' Unfortunately, there was no way to absolutely verify the claim, which was disappointing. Still: nice chair.

Sadly not a fantastic/horrifying example of human taxidermy, but actually a massive chunk of foam depicting Ronald Reagan’s beaming face. The seller had apparently nabbed it from the 1980 Republican Convention when he was a teenager, then clearly spent the next few decades trying to explain to friends and family why there was a giant Ronald Reagan head looming in the corner of his bedroom. 'My mom’ll be happy I’m getting rid of it too,' he said, eagerly accepting the $300 offer.

When a seller presented a golf ball to the gang and said it once belonged to President Lyndon Johnson, he was naturally asked how it came to be in his family’s possession. The answer was marvellous: 'He hit my dad with it down in Mexico.' Yes, President Johnson had carelessly shot the ball in the seller’s dad’s direction, thwacking him with it. The fellow quickly pocketed the offending ball, and thus it became a family heirloom. A truly tee-rific story.

Ah, Christmas... Turkeys, crackers, silly jumpers, baubles, tinsel, sprouts, selling things to men in a shop in Las Vegas, you’ve got to love all of the classic yuletide traditions.

The Pawn Stars boys certainly dig the holiday season. Only for them, ‘tis the season to be jolly hard bargainers. The Harrison family have flipped some pretty Christmassy stuff in their time. With December the 25th now visible on the snowy horizon, let’s take a nostalgic look back at some of the most festive items to have graced the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, shall we?

Alright, so no one actually claimed that the late 19th century sleigh that someone tried to pawn at the shop one Christmas actually belonged to ol’ Saint Nick, but it’s more fun to imagine it did.

The owner of this ‘cutter sleigh’ originally wanted $4,300 for the thing, due to its good condition and novelty value. But Rick wasn’t feeling as festive as that. He countered at a grand and no deal was struck in the end. The guy had to take a sleigh ride home sans the cash, wondering who he could gift a giant horse/reindeer-drawn sleigh to. 

Ho ho hold on a minute, here’s a genuine antiquity and piece of history that caught Rick’s eye one recent Christmas. A brass ‘baccy tin that would have been gifted to a British troop by Princess Mary all the way back in 1914.

Rick’s eyes lit up like Christmas tree lights when he realised he could pick this World War One curio up for a mere hundred bucks. Ordinarily these things won’t sell for much more than that but as it was Christmastime and it was in good nick, making a profit wasn’t going to prove too tricky for a wily ol’ dog like Ricky Boy.

When a shrewd seller wanted to sell four original but unpublished preliminary cover art cartoons drawn for Mad magazine by its legendary illustrator Don Martin, Corey called in an expert. His buddy Chad swung by and took a look. Chad valued the pieces at $2,400. Corey, in full-on Ebeneezer Scrooge mode, offered $1,000. A deal was eventually agreed at $500 more, half of what the seller originally wanted.

The colour illustrations were rare because Don Martin’s cartoons - which are very collectable - are usually black and white. So we’re sure Corey flogged the things on for a tidy little Christmas profit. 

This colour storyboard illustration for the original 1966 film version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas came into the store in the hands of its owner, who wanted five grand for it. Drawn by the iconic animator Chuck Jones, it was even signed by Jones. The owner knew its value, but Rick was being a Grinch himself in the negotiations.

Art expert Chad Sampson was called back to the store and he valued the cool piece of festive film history at a little less than its owner wanted. A deal was struck at $2,000. It wasn’t quite as epic a heist as The Grinch’s Christmas robbery, but it wasn’t far off. A nice profit was all but guaranteed for the guys. 

When a literary fan brought in a couple of old copies of Charlie Dickens’ festive classic A Christmas Carol, she was confident of getting $10,000 for the pair. Turns out the second edition novel, in poor condition, wasn’t even worth buying. The first edition, however, definitely was…

Corey’s ‘bah, humbug!’ reaction to the 10k price saw negotiations underway. A deal was struck at half that price because, as their book expert Rebecca informed them, a thousand dollars or so would need to be spent on restoration.