'Pawn Stars' guest brought a shipwrecked bell from 1602 and Rick Harrison was ready to pay big
Items found in shipwrecks are often considered valuable. There’s just something about discovering an item that has sat at the bottom of an ocean or a sea for centuries. That’s what one guest claimed to have when she brought a giant bell to the store on “Pawn Stars.” The guest named April claimed that the bell was on a ship of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which was the biggest trading company in the world during the 1600s and the 1700s.
Rick Harrison was instantly impressed by it. “I just love old shipwreck items. You can just imagine the journey they’ve been on. You know, everything from being loaded onto the ship to the giant storm taking the ship down all the way down to the diver 200 years later, finding it,” he said. April said she had purchased it from a shop in Indonesia and had paid $700 for it.
While Rick was impressed with the bell, his father had his reservations. “This ain’t right,” he said, much to the guest’s surprise. “I don’t think this bell was submerged in salt water. If it was, it’d be a lot worse shape than it is now.” His son then explained to April that it could be fake and that an expert needed to come in and take a look at it. Later, at the shop, a man named Carl, an expert in shipwreck coins and artifacts, came in to check its authenticity.
Richard Harrison shared his concern about the bell not being submerged in salt water, as April claimed initially, and the expert agreed with him. “Well, you’re right,” Carl said. “90% of all shipwrecks are in shallow water. In fact, most of them are sticking up. You know, they hit the reef and pretty much stay there.”
The expert then carefully looked inside the bell and assumed that it might have washed ashore from a shipwreck at some point, and the natives found it and kept it on land for several years. That would explain the condition the bell was in and would not take away from the fact that it was in a shipwreck. “I’m positive that it’s not a reproduction or a fake,” the expert said. When asked what it could be worth, he gave a figure of $15,000.
This was encouraging for April. “Never in a million years did I imagine this bell could be worth that much money. $15,000 for something that’s just been sitting in my apartment,” she said. When asked how much she wanted for it, she believed $11,000 would be a fair price. Richard was not going to give her that much and countered with $3,000.
The amount was too little. Rick knew that she was going to walk away, but his love for shipwrecked items saw him raise the amount from $3,000 to $7,200. That was the final figure agreed upon by all parties present, and a deal was struck. However, in the end, his father did not look best pleased.
