Rick Harrison gets nostalgic after 'Pawn Stars' guest brought vintage toy cars: 'I loved these...'
Rick Harrison is usually the tough negotiator on “Pawn Stars” who gets the best deal out of sellers for vintage items and collectibles. But sometimes, the star pawn shop owner gets sentimental, and these occasions bring out the fanboy or even the child in him. When a guest brought something that he used to play with as a kid, Harrison instantly grew nostalgic. There was a smile on Harrison’s face as soon as he saw the items, and with good reason.
“Are those what I think they are?” he asked as the guest revealed that they were 1966 Aurora slot cars. “Those are old ones,” Harrison said. “Yeah, these things bring back memories because I had slot cars when I was a kid. ‘73, ‘73, eight or nine years old.” Slot cars were all the rage in the 1950s and the 1960s, and kids everywhere had them and a bunch of tracks as well. These cars faded away from the toy market when the likes of Matchbox and Hot Wheels entered the picture and took the industry by storm. Until then, however, these were the real deal. Slot cars came with tracks, much like Hot Wheels, but the difference was that these cars had a mechanism under their floor that prevented them from flying off.
The guest didn’t just have the cars. He had guide pins and all the accessories that might have come with a full set. He wanted to sell his collection for $320 so that he could buy something for his wife and grandkids. Before any negotiation got underway, Rick took a few minutes to reminisce about his childhood with these cars. “Every kid in the neighbourhood had these. And we would literally get together, we’d all take our own track over to one of the friends’ houses, and we’d set up in the garage, like, a million sections went back and forth and ramped over each other. It was absolutely great, I loved these things,” he said, with a smile on his face.
Harrison wasn’t sure what the set’s latest value would be, so he called in antique toy expert Johnny Jimenez, who brought a track for these cars to the store. He, too, was enchanted by these vintage toys, especially the toy Batmobile, which he believes would alone be worth $125. Jimenez said that there was a lot of craze for the vintage toys in the market at the time of recording.
Older people, who used to play with these toys, were now buying them back to reconnect with their childhood. Overall, the collection was valued at $350. The guest then asked Harrison for $250, but the “Pawn Stars” man asked if he would part with them for $200. The guest then asked to meet in the middle at $225, and a deal was finally struck at that price.
