'Pawn Stars' boss Rick Harrison pays a small fortune for Civil War jacket guest found in donation bin

"Pawn Stars" guests aren't always collectors who come prepared with knowledge of an item's origins and value, to haggle with Rick Harrison. But some just chance upon valuable antiques and bring them to the store. This usually means that they’re even unaware of their value sometimes and end up getting more than what they might have expected. That’s what happened when one guest brought a jacket that was supposedly worn during the American Civil War.

The guest said that he had found it in a donation bin of costumes for the school theatre where he worked. The jacket was blue in color and had gold linings, meaning that it belonged to a Union Army personnel. The jacket seemed to be in fantastic shape. While that is good news in most cases, Rick Harrison thought that it was too good to be true at the time.

If this jacket had been worn by someone who fought in the war, it surely would have had signs of damage. The guest said that he’d be happy with $500 for it, which he would have used to help the school. Harrison needed to be sure before he could enter into any kind of negotiation and called in the beard of knowledge, Mark Hall-Patton, to take a look at it. Right off the bat, he too believed that the jacket was in tremendous condition.

It even had an inspector’s mark, which was the norm for such uniforms back then. However, it did not have a loop on the back where the belt might have gone through, and it showed no signs of shoulder braces that were worn with it either. That’s what made it different from a regular Union Army uniform.

Despite all that, Hall-Patton ruled in favor of the jacket being authentic. He said that it either would have been worn by someone who did not engage in any of the battles that took place, or it was an extra piece that was not distributed to the army. In either case, this was the real deal as far as the expert was concerned. That is all the confirmation that Harrison needed, and the guest was happy about it, too.

Although he said he’d be happy with $500 for it at first, he asked for a thousand bucks at first for the jacket. Harrison believed that he could get up to $2,000 for it at an auction, but due to high auction fees, his counteroffer was $750. The guest asked if $850 was possible, and the pawn shop owner agreed to that price. It was a lot more than what he had wanted when he came into the shop with it.

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