Pawn Stars! or fraud stars? And Blood Angels news.

I have become a fan of the History chanel show Pawn Stars. The premise of the show is that some dudes own a pawn shop, and people come in to sell stuff. The guys walk you through the history of the item on camera, then tries to buy the item for very little, and sell it for a lot. Occasionally they bring in an expert on some of the stuff to get the item appraised, then haggle over the price. The big moments are when they get an item like an antique Coke machine for 100 bucks, then get it fixed up and make 8 grand on it. One thing that is consistent, when some one comes in with an item, no matter what, the shop owners cut the asking price by more then half, then cap what they will pay at just above half.

In other words. They find out what an item is worth, and either pay half of that price, or don't buy it. That means they make back 100% of their investment. Standard wholesale practice. Buy an item, sell it for twice what you paid for it. Most of the time, they get the item for less then half it's price and make great money.

That brings me to the episode I just watched. A guy who had previously sold them a high end crossbow came in again, with another bow. He claimed that he lost his job and needed some quick cash so had to sell his super duper bow, described by him as the best bow in the world. The guy was also wearing a shirt plastered with the logo of the company who made the bow. He dealt out his pitch, talking up how awesome the bow is. Then the show cuts to a scene about the store owner also talking up how awesome the bow is. Then they cut back to the guys talking about the bow, and start dickering over price. In almost all situations I hvae seen, this portion goes on for at least a few minutes, with 5 or 6 counter offers until they arrive at a price.

Well not this time. This time, the owner asks for a price, something like 1500, and the shop owener inexplicably offers him 1300 as a counter. (I rounded the prices for simplicity) The bow oner accepts and the show goes on. Wait... what? In any other deal, the shop owner would always start at less then half of what the guy was asking, then dicker him up to just over half. This time he offers him almost what he asked for it with no bartering at all?

I call sheet.

The first thing I did was do a quick ebay search for the same bow. It is going for 400 bucks. The one in this episode had upgrades, but still. The shop owner is smart and rarely makes a mistake. He knows what an item is worth, and does not take the customers word for it, and he NEVER pays more then 50% of it's retail value.

Why this time? That is what brings me to my point. I was just duped again by corporate America. Only this time I was tricked into watching a 20 minute advertisement for this particular bow. Further, these guys were even more sneaky by using a popular television show to make it look like there was even more interest in this bow then a commercial could. The show gives it validity.

Later on, they take the bow to an archery shop, and have the owner look at it. The archery owner breaks into another synopsis of why the bow is awesome, and offers to sell it for the pawn shop. Finally they go out back and shoot it, two of the doofus pawn shop guys nearly hitting the bulls eye, showing just how easy it is to shoot this bow. See, any one can!

Even if the bow was worth 2 grand brand new retail, there is no way the pawn guy would pay 1300 bucks for it, since that is just about what he would be able to sell it for. Plus, the bow retails for around 1300 bucks and is currently on ebay for less then half that. The speed at which he came to an agreement calls to question the validity of the purchase. Finally, they had three different scenes talking about how awesome the bow was. These facts burn my craw.

Grr.

Oh, and I played in a tournament this weekend, and won all three of my games, taking 2nd. More on that later this week! Jawaballs