Pawn Stars s03e15 Episode Script

Getting a Head

On this episode of Pawn Stars What do we got here? We got a double rifle.
This is .
34-caliber, and this one is .
50.
This is a double -barrel gun that shoots different calibers.
That's not something you see every day.
What were you looking to get out of 'em? The sky's the limit.
I'm looking to sell this guitar.
Martins are arguably the best guitars in the world.
This piece of [Bleep.]
? Yeah.
Come on, man.
That's cold.
Got some Freddy krueger dolls.
Every teenager in the world has seen this movie.
I remember watching it when I was about six.
That's probably what's wrong with you.
[Distorted laugh.]
I'm Rick Harrison, and this is my pawn shop.
I work here with my old man and my son, big hoss.
Everything in here has a story and a price.
One thing I've learned after 21 years, you never know what is gonna come through that door.
What do we got here? Well, we got a double rifle there Okay.
And a double pistol here.
What were you looking to get out of 'em? Well, the sky's the limit.
We're not starting there, so as much as I possibly can.
Okay.
That was extremely vague.
Yes.
[Laughter.]
I decided to come in today to the pawn shop to see if I could sell my double-barrel rifle and double-barrel pistol.
One of 'em, I got at an auction, and the other one, I got in a gun store.
I want use the money for other items I want to collect as well.
This is a .
34-caliber rifle, and this one is a smooth-bore .
50.
It was made by a.
D.
Bishop.
I'm thinking 1830s, 1840s.
Yeah, I believe so too, and, you know, if you take a look at it, That's why I like it.
Yeah.
I've had a lot of black powder guns come into my shop but never with two different barrel sizes.
That's not something you see every day.
So what do you know about this little handheld shotgun? I'm guessing it might be around a .
40-, .
42-caliber.
I believe it was made in amberg, Germany.
It's in beautiful shape.
I mean, it wasn't fired that much.
You would get a lot more corrosion around here if it was used a lot.
Yeah, this thing was definitely for very close range.
Yes.
Absolutely.
So what do you want to do with these things? Pawn 'em, sell 'em? Possibly maybe entertain some offers from you.
Okay, what were you looking to get out of 'em? I was thinking around 6,000.
Um That's a lot of thinking.
I mean, I would go 3,500 bucks.
Tell you what.
Meet me at 4,500.
I can't do 4,500.
Probably the lowest I can go is 4,000.
I'll tell you what.
I'll do 3,800.
I shouldn't do that.
3,900.
All right, 3,850.
[Laughter.]
Deal.
All right.
Let's go write 'em up.
Normally I'd have someone come in and check these out, but I know enough about guns to know a good deal when I see one.
How good of a deal, I have no idea, so I'm having my buddy Sean come in to check 'em out.
What do we got here? I've got some artwork I want you to take a look at.
Johnny, you want to help him out real quick? I believe they are proofs from Steve Kaufman.
Just one of 'em or two.
I got it at an auction.
What kind of auction was it? Estate auction.
This looks like it was cut out of a frame.
And you got these at an auction like this? Did the guy who died from the estate sale happen to be an art thief or something? [Laughter.]
I decided to come into the pawn shop today to sell my Steve Kaufman artwork.
I paid $400 for both pieces.
One of the lithographs is of Napoleon, and the other one is the Japanese yen.
Do know much about these lithographs? No.
I know who Steve Kaufman is.
I've read a little bit about him.
I know he just passed away.
He was a protege of warhol.
In the past few years, he's really become popular.
The price of all of his stuff has shot up.
Kaufman was known for being warhol's assistant even though he was a great artist in his own right.
I think his stuff is amazing.
I already have several pieces, and I'm always keeping my eye out for more.
This one, I can almost guarantee you is a Steve Kaufman.
It's his style, and that looks like, you know, his signature he did on everything.
But this one literally looks like it was cut out of the frame, almost.
The other one was cut, too, down the sides.
You know, the damage on that one isn't as bad as this one, but it's still pretty bad, and people don't buy it like that, and you really shouldn't have rolled these up like this.
Yeah, I'm not I don't know a lot about artwork.
That's the way I bought it.
It's just really, really weird that you would get some Steve kaufmans like this.
Even though these are real kaufmans, they're beat to hell.
I have no idea who thought it was a good idea to tear them and roll 'em up.
People should know how to respect art.
You don't treat it like a poster in a college dorm room.
What kind of paperwork did you get with these? I didn't get any.
I mean, if these were in good shape and everything, I would love to buy 'em, 'cause he's a really hot artist right now, but to tell you the truth, I wouldn't touch them.
Well, even if this is damaged, it should be worth something.
When they're damaged, they're really not worth anything.
I'd give you $1,000 apiece for 'em if they weren't damaged.
Wow, that's too bad.
Any offer you can make me at all on these? No, I wouldn't want 'em at all.
I'll offer you 100 bucks for 'em.
What are you 100 bucks? What are you gonna do with these? I know what I'm doing.
No, you don't.
What do you care? It's 100 bucks.
Worst-case scenario, I lose $100.
You know, if you frame this, you're gonna cut its head off.
Listen, man, if you're interested, I can give you 100 bucks for 'em.
Well, it's more than it sounded like I was I gonna get, so, yeah, I'll take it.
All right, man.
All right, go do the paperwork with the guy.
All right, let's go.
All right.
My dad's always criticizing me about not thinking enough about making money, but I really think he missed the mark here.
I mean, this is still a famous work of art by a famous artist.
It's worth a gamble even if it is damaged.
What can I help you with? Well, I'm looking to sell this guitar.
It's a Martin.
It's four-string.
It's really old, and it's rare.
And it's really beat up.
That it is.
[Laughs.]
[Guitar string twangs.]
I came to the pawn shop to sell my 1930s acoustic Martin four-string guitar.
It's pretty beat up.
The wood's pretty brittle and kind of broken up.
It's missing the nut, missing the bridge.
But it is a Martin, so I definitely think it could be worth a good chunk of change.
"C.
F.
Martin & company, nazareth, Pennsylvania.
" And "om18p.
" That's a 1930s serial number.
I mean, it's your pretty standard Martin, except it's a four-string.
I mean, I think they were played for bluegrass, you know, twangy, pretty simple music.
Yes, sir.
Martins are arguably the best guitars in the world.
Absolutely.
Christian Martin started making guitars in the early 1800s, and he was damn good at it.
He was so damn good at it, his family kept on making 'em ever since.
Collectors tend to go nuts over the pre-world war ii ones.
They're just pure classics.
Mahogany back, birch top, and ebony fret board with three little mother-of-pearl inlays.
You don't have the bridge right here? No, I don't.
This thing is nicked, gouged.
It's really beat up.
There's, like, glue or something all over this right here, but as beat up as it is, it's still worth a lot of money.
Right.
These things are almost like a rolex.
They're made with unbelievable precision and the finest materials.
How much were you looking to get out of it? I'm thinking something around 5,000.
I can't imagine paying more than, like, 500 bucks for it.
I know it's a Martin, but you're not thinking about that, are you? Not at 5,000.
I'd be willing to go around 2,000.
For this piece of [Bleep.]
? Yeah.
Why don't you go back in the back and do whatever you're doing here so I can do business, all right? Have fun losing money, dude.
I love old acoustic guitars, especially Martins, and I don't give a damn what Corey thinks.
He thinks all guitars should be electric.
I really don't want to pay over 2 grand for this thing.
I don't know, man.
This is a really rare guitar.
Um You know, I'll go 2,500 bucks.
I will not go any more.
[Sighs.]
offer.
That's what I can do.
All right.
All right.
All right, let's walk over here and do some paperwork.
All right.
I wanted 5,000.
I got 2,500.
It's a little bit lower than I expected, but, you know, I didn't have a use for it, and at least I gave it to somebody who appreciates what it is.
There you go, man.
All right.
The great thing is, I don't even need to bother getting this thing restored.
I know collectors that go nuts for Martins, and even in rough condition, this will be an easy sell.
I have here a 1921 bottle of dom perignon, unopened.
A 1921 bottle is very rare and worth a ton.
How much were you looking to get out of it? $24,000.
So what do you think they're worth? The hammer's really wobbly.
The parts are worn.
In its present state [Sighs.]
Hey, how you doing? I got some Freddy krueger dolls.
Freddy krueger dolls? Did you get scared when you watched Freddy krueger the first time? Be honest with you, when I saw it, it scared the [Bleep.]
Out of me.
[Distorted.]
Hi, I'm Freddy.
[Laughs.]
This is bringing back nightmares.
You okay, boss? [Distorted laugh.]
[Woman screams.]
I decided to come out to the pawn shop to sell some Freddy krueger dolls that are signed.
I paid around $10 each for these dolls, and I'm looking, hopefully, to get $40 or $50 so I can show a little bit of investment.
So what can you tell me about these, sir? They've never been out of the box except to be signed.
This one was out of the box.
It's signed underneath the belly, and there's a pull string on the back.
[Distorted.]
Welcome to elm street.
That's creepy.
[Distorted.]
I'm Freddy.
This one has never been opened, and it's signed there.
Were you scared to meet Freddy? No.
Nice guy.
Robert englund played Freddy krueger.
The fact that he signed these dolls is kind of cool.
Nightmare on elm street has become a cult classic.
I think every teenager in the world has seen this movie.
I remember watching it when I was about six.
That's probably what's wrong with you today.
I never understood horror movies.
If you want horror, have a couple of kids.
What are you wanting to do, sir? Pawn 'em, sell 'em? I'd like to sell 'em.
Yeah, well, I'm not much of a Freddy krueger doll collector.
I'd go 40 bucks for 'em that's for both of 'em? Yeah.
They're signed.
They've never been out of the box.
They're running for 45, without a signature.
I'll push it to 50.
I ain't going no higher than that.
All right.
You got a deal.
That'll work for me.
I'm happy.
Chumlee, go do the paperwork, would you, please? I made 50 bucks on the dolls.
I feel great about it.
Now I'll go out and invest the money in something else.
Earlier, I bought a pair of double -barreled guns for 3,850.
I'm sure I made a great deal, but I called down my buddy Sean to take a closer look and to see if they could be fired.
These guns are right down here.
Cool.
Let's have a look.
I specialize in buying and selling antique arms and armor and providing the motion picture industry with the real antique props.
Rick is always calling me whenever he gets an antique weapon in that he's not so sure of.
All right, what kind of questions do you have? Gonna be a lot easier to sell 'em if I have some history on 'em.
What this is, is a double -barrel percussion pistol.
This would date in that, you know, 1840s range.
It's actually at the first glance, it looks French, but this is actually German.
The closer you look at it, it just gets better and better.
You've got, like, a wolf head or something here carved.
It's really, really ornate.
Back in the day, a true artisan would express his talent by creating a masterpiece.
They were working in multi-mediums of material, wood, metal.
I mean, this was a really, really tough talent to learn.
Because it's got a lot of floral decoration, forest-looking things and animals, this could be a self-protection gun against, when they're hunting, maybe wild boar.
This would be a nice sidearm to have.
If you didn't kill him in the initial shot and he's rushing at you because he's really pissed off, having two additional shots to put him down would be a nice thing.
So you think we can go out and shoot that? You know, in its present state, no.
Well, what needs to be done to it? Well, the hammer's really wobbly.
It needs just to be tightened up.
You know, it just needs to go through a thorough investigation and safety check.
So let's talk about this one.
This, I really like a lot.
I love multi-barrel guns.
When do you think it was made? I'm gonna say the early 1850s.
Okay.
I really love, you know, the nice checkering on the wrist.
This nice little federal eagle on the side, this is cool.
So you think we can shoot it? I think absolutely.
Overall, the condition of the long gun is really, surprisingly, in good shape.
We'll be able to fire this.
So what do you think they're worth? This one, with a restoration, I'm thinking maybe 2,500 to 3,500.
Okay.
This one, the condition is really, really nice.
As is, at least probably 3,000 to 4,000.
So I think, overall, you did really well.
What are you doing tomorrow? I think we're going to the range and shooting this gun.
[Laughter.]
$3,000 to $4,000 just for the rifle is exactly what I wanted to hear, so I should be able to make all my money back on the rifle alone, so now the big question is, will this rifle fire? What can I help you with, sir? I have here a 1921 bottle of dom perignon, unopened.
Oh, yeah.
Time to party like it's your birthday.
Popping bottles in the pawn shop.
No, we're not popping that bottle.
[Laughs.]
I decided to come to the pawn shop today to see if I can sell my unopened bottle of 1921 dom perignon champagne.
This is a very significant bottle of dom perignon.
It's the first year that it was made, 1921.
Only 1,000 bottles came to the United States, so this is extremely rare.
So where did you get it? I got it from my dad, who got it from his Uncle.
Dom perignon was a 17th -century monk who became a master at anything and everything wine.
His big invention was a cork that was held down with a hemp string, sort of like champagne bottles today that are held down with a wire.
The reason this invention was so big is, when he made sparkling wine, the cork wouldn't pop out.
Do you know how to ferment wine? No.
Add a little yeast.
Put it in a barrel.
Let it ferment.
You know, the grape juice turns to wine.
When they made champagne, what they do is bottle it before it's fully fermented.
That way, carbon dioxide is still forming inside the bottle, so that's how you get the bubbly.
It was a really neat, weird process, because when they first started making champagne, the bottles weren't really strong enough to hold all the pressure from the champagne, so the bottle makers had to guarantee to buy back any bottles that broke.
That's why wine's been around for thousands and thousands of years and champagne has only been around since the 1700s.
the best vintages too.
This was, like, supposedly, like, the best vintage of champagne.
So how have you been storing this? It's just been in my great -Uncle's liquor cabinet, and then when he gave it to my dad, it stayed in there.
All right, so it's just been sitting straight up like this in a liquor cabinet? Yes.
Okay.
As far as I know, yeah.
Champagne has to be stored really cold and down on the cork.
I guarantee you, you open this thing up, you will get sick if you drink it.
I don't want to purchase it, because it's not champagne inside anymore.
I mean, it's ruined.
Well, I could see that as maybe it's not worth 8,000 as a drinkable champagne, but you got to think about the rarity of it.
When you get down to things that there's only one or two of in existence, drinkable or not drinkable, even a wine collector might like to have this in his collection even though he's not gonna drink it just because of the absolute rarity of it.
[Sighs.]
You know, I can see your selling point.
I mean, I can try and get ahold of someone to come down here and take a look at it.
That's all I can tell you.
That would be fantastic.
Well, let me see if I can get him down here.
Okay.
Terrific.
If this guy is right and a 1921 bottle is very rare, it's worth getting someone down here to check this thing out.
We'll see if this thing's got any value or if someone should have popped this thing open a long time ago.
Earlier, I bought a pair of double -barreled guns that Sean was able to check out.
In the end, only one was deemed safe to fire, so Sean and I dragged chum out to see if it would fire.
It's gonna be so much easier to sell if I know how it works.
Back in the day, this would be a weapon of choice for the everyman to do hunting.
This was intended to bring food home for the table for the family, and the best part about it is that you had two different calibers.
You had a smooth-bore barrel and a rifle barrel, and the smooth-bore could be a shotgun to be able to shoot birds and what have you.
And the rifle barrel, one projectile, being a round ball, and since it's rifled inside the barrel, that makes the ball spin, giving it much better accuracy.
Who knows when the last time this thing was shot? So we're gonna just do a light load.
What you're gonna be shooting at, chum, my kids and I have put together a target of a buffalo.
I don't know how many buffalo you see around here, but it's actually my first.
[Laughs.]
All right, chum, it's real important to aim for that "x," and if you don't hit that "x," you're just gonna piss him off, and you've got maybe five seconds before that thing's gonna charge at you and you're just you're gonna have to change your shorts.
I'm gonna kill this buffalo and make you a toupee.
[Laughs.]
It's really important that these guys hit the buffalo in the kill zone, because if they don't and if that was a real buffalo, they are a nasty, mean beast, and you don't want to be in their path.
All right, come on, chum.
[Intense music.]
  [animal chattering.]
[Gunshot.]
Yeah! I hit him in the sweet spot.
You shot him in the nose! No, you shot his nose off.
Come on, man.
The projectiles hit right in the sweet spot area, so, chum, I got to give it to you, man.
That was a hell of a shot.
It was a kill shot.
[Gunshot.]
Let's go get some ice cream.
It's hot out here.
[Laughter.]
Earlier, a guy came in with a bottle from the first year dom perignon ever made champagne.
I had some big concerns on how it was stored, but what I really wanted to know is, how rare is it, and is there value? So I called in my buddy Jeff, who's an expert on vintage wines, to take a look.
I'm the proprietor of marche bacchus, a fine wine store in Las Vegas, Nevada.
I've been a fine wine collector for about 15, 20 years.
Dom perignon, the most recognizable champagne in the world.
perignon ever produced.
Released in 1936, actually, on new year's Eve, so t he wine is such a collector's item.
Well, being a wine lover myself, seeing a bottle of first-introduction dom perignon is extremely rare.
There's only been 35 vintages of dom perignon produced since 1921, and '21 is considered to be an excellent vintage and an excellent wine.
So, Rick, what's your concerns? Is it any good anymore? Well, the condition of the bottle, you've got some nicks here on the wax capsules.
That's called the ullage level.
It's actually fairly low, so you've lost some champagne during the process.
Typically happens through evaporation.
When the cork dries, it actually contracts in size and allows some of the wine to actually go out of the sides between the cork and the neck of the bottle.
And you can see that there's quite a bit of sediment in this bottle too, so chances are, the wine's probably pretty dead.
So I guess the question is, how was it stored during this period? Apparently, not the correct way.
Ah.
I was afraid of that.
The way you should have stored it was in 50to 55-degree temperatures with 75% relative humidity.
That would keep the cork moist so that it doesn't shrink and you don't lose some of the wine.
What's it worth? You've got a bottle of '21.
This stuff is unavailable anywhere.
It's a really cool bottle, and in pristine condition, $8,200, $10,000.
In this condition, if you put it on the shelf, maybe some guy comes by who wants it just for the value of the label.
Probably $1,000 maybe.
Someone might pay you as much as that for it.
Basically, the wine's worthless.
A little bit for the bottle.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Thanks a lot, though.
All right, well, that was some bad news.
Well, if you look at it that way.
I don't see me being able to sell it.
See, I think of it as a bottle collector's type of thing.
Anyone who wants this is gonna want a bottle with good champagne in it, and we have a bottle with turpentine in it.
I can't use it.
I just don't see it.
I'm sorry.
That's okay.
Thank you very much.
I disagree with the pawn dudes.
I think this bottle's very, very valuable, and I think they missed a great opportunity to make some good money.
the very best of days, but a serious collector is not gonna touch this bottle, so to spend the time tracking someone down who just wants a display piece sounds more like a hassle than a profit.
[Distorted.]
Welcome to elm street.
Hi, I'm Freddy.
Watch out.
Freddy's back.
Let's be friends.
I'm Freddy.
Pleasant dreams.
[Distorted laugh.]
[Laughs.]

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