Rick Harrison

In 1981 Harrison's father opened his first 300-square-foot secondhand store, the Gold & Silver Coin Shop, which opened on Las Vegas Boulevard South. Harrison worked for his father in the store in the daytime while repossessing cars at night. After five years the store moved to a larger location on Fremont Street. After two years at that location the Harrisons lost their lease. They subsequently moved into a new building in a commercial neighborhood on Las Vegas Boulevard.[13] Harrison relates in his autobiography that he and his father had long-sought to convert the store into a pawn shop, calling it a "logical progression." Because of a 1955 Las Vegas law requiring the issuing of new pawn licenses to be limited on the basis of the city's population, which by 1988 was over 200,000 and rapidly growing, Harrison called the city statistician every week, so that they could apply for a rare and much-coveted pawn license as soon as the city's population reached 250,000. By 1989 the city's population reached that number and after some legal struggles, the Harrisons obtained their pawn license.[14] That year Harrison and his father opened the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop less than two miles from the Las Vegas Strip.[1] By 2005, Harrison and his father were loaning out about $3 million annually, which brought them about $700,000 in interest income.[15]

By 2006, the shop had developed a reputation for carrying special sports items with unique histories,[16] including a 2001 New England Patriots Super Bowl ring that belonged to American football cornerback Brock Williams.[17] It also served gamblers who, according to Harrison's son Corey, often came in to "pawn something so they have gas to get back home."[18]

According to Harrison in 2010, the items most often brought into the store are jewelry.[19] Since the inception of Pawn Stars, Harrison's inventory typically has a ratio of 5,000 items pawned per 12,000.

Harrison spent four years pitching the idea of making a show about a pawn shop after his shop was featured in the show Insomniac with Dave Attell in 2003, but his efforts did not yield success. In 2008, Brent Montgomery and Colby Gaines of Leftfield Pictures came up with an idea about a reality show based in a Las Vegas pawn shop and approached Harrison.[20] The series was originally pitched to HBO, though the network preferred the series to have been a Taxicab Confessions-style series taking place at the Gold & Silver's night window.[6] In a February 2009 YouTube video titled "Pawn star$", Corey Harrison promised to gun down an intruder with a handgun he displayed, and a woman screamed as she was removed from the store after demanding that the wedding ring her husband sold to the shop be returned.[21]

Nancy Dubuc of the History Channel changed the format, which included on-camera experts appraising the items brought into the Gold & Silver as well as personality dynamics of the store's staff and patrons. Initially to have been titled Pawning History, the program was renamed Pawn Stars at the suggestion of a Leftfield staffer,[6] playing off the term "porn stars" for more marketing appeal. The show features Harrison and his father, Richard Harrison (generally referred to on the show as "The Old Man") along with his son Corey ("Big Hoss") and Corey's childhood friend and employee Austin "Chumlee" Russell.[6] Richard Harrison died in June 2018,[22][23] during production of the fifteenth season.[24] In 2010, the National Pawnbrokers Association awarded the Pawnbroker of the Year Award to Harrison for his contributions in enlightening the public about the pawn industry.[25]

In January 2011, Pawn Stars was the highest rated program on the History Channel, and the second-highest rated reality show behind Jersey Shore.[26] On June 7 2011, Harrison published a biography called License to Pawn: Deals, Steals, and My Life at the Gold & Silver. His book reached #22 on The New York Times Best Seller list on June 26, 2011.[27]

Harrison appeared as himself, alongside his son Corey and Chumlee, in "i Lost My Head in Vegas", the November 3, 2012 episode of the American TV series iCarly. Four days later, he appeared as an antique store owner in "The Safe", the November 7, 2012 episode of the TV series The Middle.[28]

In January 2014, Harrison became spokesperson for the Micro Touch One Razor, a personal care shaving product for men. Harrison appeared in a television commercial promoting the One Razor product line. In June 2014, History premiered United Stuff of America, a series from the producers of Pawn Stars that focuses on notable artifacts that were used in important moments in history, such as the cane with which Andrew Jackson fended off a presidential assassin, the axe Abraham Lincoln used as a young rail splitter, and the pencils Ulysses S. Grant used to write his memoirs.[29][30] In July 2014, the game show Pawnography premiered on the History Channel, in which Harrison, Corey, and Chumlee compete against players in an attempt to prevent them from winning cash and items from the inventory of the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop.[31]