'Pawn Stars' boss Rick Harrison refused to buy a religious relic that creeped him out evidently
Rick Harrison usually takes a very rational approach towards buying items on “Pawn Stars,” with his complete focus on squeezing out profits. He does make exceptions and shells out more when he comes across items that he is fascinated by. But that was not the case when a guest on that occasion had brought a holy relic with him, for which he hoped to get $300. It belonged to a woman named Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born woman to be canonized by the Catholic Church. But Harrison didn't find it appealing since it was just too creepy.
Usually, such relics contain a part of the original owner’s body, like hair, skin, or tissue. On this occasion, the guest had no idea what it was but assumed that it might have been a piece of her clothing. Harrison didn’t buy into that as he believed that it looked like blood. The guest had brought a certificate of authenticity that could have contained information about it, but it was written in Latin. Harrison, therefore, had to call in an expert who could read the language and tell him what the certificate said. Kristin Slonski, a classical linguist at the University of Nevada, was the expert in this case. She said that the relic might contain a part of Seton’s skin before reading out the certificate. According to her translation, any person in possession of the relic is forbidden to perform any marketing activities with it.
“That means if I buy it, I’m gonna go to hell?” he asked, to which his father said that he was already going there. Harrison had already found the item a bit unnerving, and the expert helped him make up his mind about what to do with it. “I’m all creeped out by it now anyway, so I’m not gonna buy it,” he said.
The Relics were never sold, so there is no reference to how much the price of it would be at an auction. “Even if you were going to buy it, there’s no way of judging its monetary value because these things are never sold. There’s no starting point,” she explained.
“If there is no monetary value to this, it’s not something I am interested in. Plain and simple,” Harrison said later on. This is not the first time he has turned down the chance to buy something on the show. In a different episode, he turned down the chance to buy the sunken treasure of the Taj Mahal. It was a clump of Indian Rupee coins minted in the 17th century.
The guest had asked for $700,000 for the coins, and this was a lot of money. Those coins might have sold for a higher price at the right auction, and Harrison wasn’t willing to take the risk. "I really, really want this. I mean, this thing is truly incredible. But tying up 3/4 of a million dollars in one item, it could bankrupt this shop," he explained.
