'Pawn Stars' boss Rick Harrison surprises guest by paying triple the amount she wanted for a rare coin

Rick Harrison of “Pawn Stars” is known to be a shrewd negotiator and tries to get the owner of an item to lower the asking price, even after getting an expert to evaluate it. But that doesn't mean the pawn shop owner isn't honest, and sometimes he even comes across as too generous. That was the case when a contestant on an earlier episode of the show brought a gold coin and wanted $1000 for it. Rick knew that the gold alone was worth more than that and did not want to rip her off. So he stepped up and paid three times more than what she had asked for.

This wasn’t just a regular gold coin. Its backstory is quite interesting and mired in controversy. The coin was made by popular American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1904 when President Theodore Roosevelt put him up to the task. Roosevelt believed that the current currency of the time made Lady Liberty look like someone's “grandma,” according to Harrison. However, the coin did not have the words ‘in God we trust’ as was the norm back then. Not having those words inscribed on the coin was not well received by a population that was still very religious. Rick then revealed that Congress passed a law in 1908 and brought those words back to their currency, putting this particular gold coin out of production. The no motto double eagle coin is considered to be highly valuable by collectors.

Harrison still wasn’t sure of how much the coin was worth, so he called in an expert to help him with that. Sanford Mann, CEO of American Hartford Gold, walked into the store, and he too was charmed upon seeing the coin. "These coins were minted in Philadelphia, and they only minted 361,000 of these coins. And we speculate there’s about 50,000 that are still left in existence that were uncirculated,” he said.

Being the subject of public outrage in the previous century isn’t the only thing that makes these coins special. People kept them long after they were taken out of circulation since they were made of gold. However, in 1933, the US government made the possession of gold illegal for its citizens. That’s when people started hiding them from the authorities just to stop them from being confiscated.

“Somebody actually probably hid this in a wall or a floorboard, believe it or not. And that’s what people were doing to not get their gold confiscated,” Mann explained. It was then time for him to put a price on it. “A similar coin to this, an MS-68, just sold at auction for $218,000.” Rick’s heart sank when he heard this. “But unfortunately, this is not an MS-68.”

Mann said that it was an MS-63 coin worth $4000. The guest was excited upon hearing this and asked for $3800. Rick said that he was okay with $3000, and the guest found that agreeable. It was still three times more than what she expected to get for it.