The Custom Dodgers Piece That Upset Appraisers On Pawn Stars
The guys on Pawn Stars have seen their fair share of valuable antiques and bizarre oddities — sometimes both within a single item. While the show has plenty of fake aspects, the one thing that's all too true is the look of devastation on a seller's face when they discover an item they have isn't as profitable as they first thought.
From fake autographs to antiques that are newer than expected, Rick Harrison and his team have seen plenty of shady things come through the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop. In some cases, you end up feeling bad for the seller for hanging onto this item for so long believing it was something it actually wasn't. Then there's the rare instance of a seller who could've made some serious dough from the pawnshop if only they had taken better care of the item in question.
In the season 12 episode, "Lock, Stock and Pawn," a guy by the name of Tom walks into the store with memorabilia presented in a rather peculiar fashion. He took a bunch of signed baseball cards, bats, and balls and formed them into a bench. You know... for sitting. He obviously believed it was quite the work of art, but one of Rick's experts thought differently.
This Pawn Stars seller destroyed the value of autographed items by drilling through them
The seller, Tom, asks for $60,000 for the bench. Rick understandably doesn't really know what all he's looking at, but there seems to be a lot of autographs, so he gets his expert, Jeremy, to see what a more realistic price for all of this is. Jeremy starts off with some good news; there is quite a bit of value within the bench. For instance, Tom has a signed Jackie Robinson card from the 1950s that's naturally worth quite a bit of money. There are some other highlights, but then Jeremy brings down the hammer of bad news on this Pawn Stars episode.
Despite a few bright spots, a lot of the signed cards he has underneath the glass really aren't all that valuable. Perhaps that could be forgiven had Tom not made the cardinal sin of drilling through a bunch of signed bats and balls in order to form the back of the bench. The quality of the signatures doesn't really matter because the pieces themselves are pretty much destroyed. On top of that, the expert asserts that it'd be really hard to find someone who would want all of these collectibles presented in this manner. To sell the few cards worth some money, Rick would have to break it down, which would be a shame for all of the work Tom put into it.
To his credit, Rick actually offers the guy $8,000 for the bench with the caveat that he's going to have to disassemble it to get to the cards. The seller just can't part with it for that low, so he walks out of the door. It may not have resulted in a sale, but the audience at home is left with an important lesson — don't drill through your valuables.