They may get lucky and find a buyer on Craiglist, but for many high end items, an individual is just not in the position to market it properly by themselves. I see people walk away after rejecting an offer to buy and they say they'll just sell it themselves. Antique Roadshow lets people know how much stuff might ultimately be worth, but Pawn Stars over and over emphasizes that you are not going to get that ultimate price when you use a middleman. This show does have a bit of a Antique Roadshow antidote factor. The trick is to keep that to an absolute minimum. I notice that when the elbows are flying and the pressure is on early during the set-up period of a show, I often buy a few items that end up priced for far less than I paid for them after we get them back to the office and do the research. We all do this at shows from time to time, also. When the lights are on and everybody is looking at you, it would be very easy to announce an $800 price for an item that you might have marked $425 back in the shop with plenty of time to look it over and look at your sales records. Some guys can carry around an accurate encyclopedia of prices in their heads - not me. I always do best when I can sit in front of the computer and compare items to our records of past sales. When you say something like "the only real value it has is the heat it will put off when when you finally burn it", well - that does not generate as many smiles as you might think. Everybody is smiling when the numbers are large. The natural desire is to tell people what they want to hear, and you have to fight that as it can lead to inaccurate appraisals. Having recently participated in an event involving 'on-the-spot' appraisals, I found that it is very easy to shoot high unless you take your time and really think about it. I have purchased a few items from them at Bob Chatt's show in Pomona, and was more than pleased with the transactions. They are extremely nice people, and very pleasant to deal with. Paul and his wife run a shop in CA (Glendale, if I remember properly). I love this show and usually their appraisers seem fairly savvy, but this time I think they got a lemon. The guy who appraised was said to be a militaria dealer but perhaps he has shop and/or only sells at shows - those guys often price stuff at twice what it sells for on Ebay, but even then it's hard to imagine getting anything more than $400 for that getup. I just watched that too and my guess was the same: about $400 tops, with half of that being for the cap. If the jacket had wings and some combat ribbons, then it might be worth $400. IMO 15th AF bullion aren't that hard to come by, so no big $$$ on that one. The crusher is the best piece and would probably bring around $250, but the rest isn't that great. In my opinion, the group wasn't worth the $400 he was paid. The pawn shop guy offers the owner $400 and the deal is done. The "expert" says the whole set is worth around $800. The pawn shop doesn't know exactly what the stuff is worth, so he brings in his resident "militaria expert".
and officer's winged props and 2Lt bars (no wings or ribbons) OD 4 pocket jacket with bullion 15th AF patch, U.S. Here is a list of what was in the group and the condition of all the pieces was good. He thinks it's his grandfather's, but he's not sure.
#Pawn stars game appraisal tv#
For those that have seen the TV show "Pawn Stars", I was watching it tonight and this guy brought in a 15th AF uniform set.