I am something of a “Pawn Stars” Junkie.  Rick Harrison just wrote a book and was interviewed on NPR.  Some interesting observations:

“Two years ago, a man walked into the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas with a pair of diamond earrings.

Pawn dealer Rick Harrison asked him the typical questions — Where did you get it? Where is the receipt? — and the man readily answered. Harrison filled out the required paperwork and paid the man $40,000 for his merchandise.

The very next day, Harrison found out the earrings were stolen. The victim got her earrings back and the criminal was prosecuted. Harrison, meanwhile, was out $40,000.

“It’s the cost of doing business,” Harrison says. “That’s the way I look at it. … And Las Vegas is a crazy town at times. There’s a lot of high-end things I get. So you have to know about … really large diamonds, really expensive watches. … So it’s a lot different than most places.”

Harrison, a second-generation pawn shop owner, is one of the stars of The History Channel’s reality series Pawn Stars. The show follows Harrison, his father, Richard, his son Big Hoss and his son’s friend Chumlee as they meet and haggle with customers who bring in all sorts of objects to sell and pawn. Harrison and his relatives assess the value of the objects — and try to determine whether or not they’re fake — before offering their customers a collateral loan or money for their merchandise.

Harrison’s new memoir, License to Pawn, details how he became an expert in, among other things, spotting fake Rolexes (he sees at least one a day), customer relations, human behavior, antiques and economics — all through running his 24-hour-a-day pawn business over the past 30 years.

 

How Pawn Shops Work

Pawn shops, Harrison says, have been around for thousands of years and are among the oldest forms of banking. The way it works is simple: Customers provide a personal item as collateral to receive a loan from a pawn broker, who can then sell the product if the customer doesn’t pay back the loan plus interest in a set amount of time.

to read more, go to:    http://www.npr.org/2011/06/09/137033690/pawn-star-rick-harrison-on-his-deals-and-steals