The Item That Football Star Brock Williams Never Recovered From Pawn Stars
If you need a quick infusion of cash and own something of value, a pawn shop can be just the right service to get you out of a pickle. They'll give you a loan and hold onto your goods as collateral. All you need to do is pay it back in a timely manner to reclaim your stuff, otherwise, it goes up for sale. That's true of a college kid with a PS5, someone playing fast and loose with their grandma's pearls, and even a retired NFL player holding onto a ritzy symbol of former glory.
Fans of History's mega-hit series Pawn Stars know this all too well. In the intro to the series, Rick Harrison says of his iconic World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, "Everything in here has a story and a price." We've seen some pretty wild and expensive items pass through the doors of World Famous, and it's a particularly heavy piece of jewelry prominently featured in the show's original intro sequence that has one of the better stories attached to it.
Many years ago, former New England Patriots cornerback Brock Williams visited the iconic pawnshop and left with his fingers considerably lighter. In need of some quick cash, he took out a reasonable loan using the championship ring he received in 2001 when the Patriots' won Super Bowl XXXVI as collateral. Most shocking of all: He never went back to claim it.
Williams took a big loss when he pawned his Super Bowl ring
The story of exactly why Williams pawned his Super Bowl ring and never came back to collect it is a bit of a mystery. However, thanks to some reporting by ESPN, we do know that Williams' ring was worth enough for the cornerback to secure a loan offer of over $10,000 from Harrison. It seems that Williams had a very specific reason for needing the money, though, since he only ended up taking a loan of $2,600. The smaller amount seems to imply that he had plans to come back for the irreplaceable bauble, but for one reason or another that never happened.
The ring remained abandoned at World Famous, and can be seen glimmering on a tray with some other jewelry in the show's opening credits. In a separate ESPN article about the incident, Williams was asked for comment about the ring. Instead of offering details, he simply said, "Ah, man, that was a bad time ... I'm just trying to put that all behind me."
The loss is more than just sentimental. A blog dedicated to the history of championship rings, aptly entitled Sports Rings, reported that in the 2010s the Patriots' Super Bowl XXXVI rings sold at auction for anywhere from $38,000 to $43,000. It's not the most expensive sale of a Super Bowl ring of all time, but it's nothing to sneeze at, and it's certainly more than $2,600.
At least Williams can still admire it every time he watches an episode of Pawn Stars.