'Pawn Stars' boss Rick Harrison shows off a wooden telephone more expensive than an iPhone

Human beings have come a long way with the technology that they've developed, but every device that was the first of its kind will always be special. "Pawn Stars" boss Rick Harrison has collected all sorts of items, including some of the most significant inventions. In 2020, before the CES, one of the most anticipated tech events, CNET's Patrick Colin went down to the pawn shop to check out some of the ancient pieces of technology. One of them, interestingly, was a wooden telephone box which Harrison called a high-tech, compact telephone that came with a price tag comparable to an Apple iPhone.

Colin went all the way to Las Vegas to interview the pawn boss and check out the cool items that he had lined up for the tech publication. As he walked into the store, Harrison had three items lined up on the table that he wanted to show to the world. The items included a hand-operated card printing machine from the 1800s, a slide projector from the 1920s, and a wooden telephone from the 1900s as well.

"This was high-tech when it came out. This was like the first home personal printer. It's a consumer product from the 1890s, and you could make business cards like postcards, things like that. You're talking cast iron here. And to get cast-iron precision parts wasn't technically feasible until the 1890s when more technology was coming out on casting temperatures, casting materials, everything else like that," Harrison explained to Colins about the first item.

The pawn boss then turned the clock back to the 1800s when things weren't nearly as high-tech as today. "Nowadays, people look at stuff like, 'This is so high-tech', but remember, in the 1890s? They were still sitting around like, 'The amazing time we live in! This technology is absolutely amazing,'" he said. He then jumped to the 1900s, adding that it was the same around that time as well, but by then, some technology started to show up. He then moved on to the slide projector, which he claimed was a big deal back then.

"This is a 1920s slide projector. It used glass slides, but it was high-tech for the time. It took an electric lightbulb and had great optics. It seemed like every 10 years all through the 20th century they got better and better with lenses and stuff like that," he told Colin. While Harrison had all the equipment, he joked that he lacked a key element, the eyepiece of the machine.

In the end, Harrison showed off his vintage, wooden telephone, which was extremely rare in the current market. "The telephone, right here, was cool because it was a compact model. You didn't have to have a giant thing on the wall, because you got this tiny thing," Harrison said, pointing to the not-so-compact wooder box with two bells and a receiver. 

"This is like their version of a smartphone. This was high-tech when it came out," Harrison emphasized, adding that it may be worth as much. He further explained that the item was comparable to an iPhone at the CES, which will also become old-school tech in the coming centuries.