'Pawn Stars' host Chumlee buys Roman boxing glove without expert advice — it doesn't end well
Chumlee might be a beloved member of the cast of "Pawn Stars," but he has made several mistakes during his time at the shop. In an earlier episode of the show, one guest effortlessly scammed him into paying over a thousand bucks for a replica. At the time, the expert was unavailable, so Chumlee had no choice but to take a risk, hoping it would pay off. Unfortunately, it didn’t.
The item was what the guest called an ancient Roman cestus. A cestus is essentially a boxing glove from that era that was far more brutal than the ones used today. Back then, a lot of fights, even if they were for sport, were to the death. Therefore, the fighters needed something that would seriously damage their opponent. A cestus did that job perfectly. It was made of metal and had blunt spikes at the front.
One hit from it could easily crack someone’s skull and knock them out. It was not a painless experience for the user either. These metal objects only had a thin sheet of wool as a cushion. With each punch, the user must have felt a significant amount of discomfort in their hands. The guest said that he had received the cestus from his father, who had traced it back to the city of Pompeii.
The guest had a letter, which he said was a certificate of authenticity. However, that’s not what it really was. For Chumlee, though, that was good enough for him to take a risk. The guest had initially asked for $1,500, to which the pawn shop employee offered $900. Both parties settled on $1,200 as a final fee for the cestus. Then, it was time to see whether this was the real deal.
The reason why Chumlee could not call an expert was that he was not in town at the time. But the 42-year-old sent the cestus to him later on, and the two got together on a video call about the matter. Bob Dodge, founder of Artemis Testing Lab, was the man for the job. He usually uses a special light to inspect such items and figure out if they are real or fake by their composition.
A metal object back in those days would have been made of bronze. Therefore, the chemical composition had to be primarily copper and tin. The cestus had copper in it, but it also had a significant percentage of zinc. The metal had been discovered back then, but the expert revealed that an authentic cestus would have had around 2% to 3% zinc. This one had 23% zinc.
This proved that Chumlee had paid $1,200 for a replica. He hoped that it would be about 1,000 years old, but the expert asked him to take a zero away from that. Safe to say that the pawn shop celebrity was not too pleased with himself.
More on Market Realist:
'Pawn Stars' boss Rick Harrison spends a whopping $9,000 on a tiny book called 'Dance of Death'
'Pawn Stars' boss Rick Harrison uses classic bargaining move to buy Civil War medal for just $1,250
