
Each episode consists of segments devoted to approximately five or six of these items, in which one of the staff members, usually Rick Harrison, his son Corey, or Harrison's father Richard (known as the "Old Man"), explains the history behind the object. Although jewellery is the most commonly pawned item at the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, most of the customers featured in episodes bring in a variety of vintage or antique items to the store, which has 12,000 items in its inventory as of July 2011 (5,000 of which are typically held on pawn).
#Pawn stars the game prestige series#
The series is filmed on location at the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, Nevada. World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in 2010 The staffer adjusted its storyline in order to bring it in line with the network's brand, which included the on-camera experts appraising the items brought into the Gold & Silver, though she did not discourage the interpersonal conflicts among the show's stars.


The name is an intentional pun of porn stars. The network concurred, believing that name to be more pleasing and easily remembered. History president Nancy Dubuc, who had been charged with creating programming with a more populist appeal to balance out the network's in-depth military programming, picked up the series, which was initially titled Pawning History, before a staffer at Leftfield suggested that Pawn Stars would fit better with the locale. The format eventually evolved into the now-familiar family-oriented motif used on the series. 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. The shop, and Rick, had previously been featured in the Las Vegas episode of Insomniac with Dave Attell in 2003. It had been the subject of a 2001 PBS documentary, and the manager and part-owner, Rick Harrison, had been trying unsuccessfully to pitch a show based on his shop for four years.
#Pawn stars the game prestige tv#
Thinking such shops might contain unique characters, they searched for a family-run shop on which to center a TV series until they found the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop less than two miles from the Las Vegas Strip. Pawn Stars began with Brent Montgomery and Colby Gaines of Leftfield Pictures, who were struck by the array of eclectic and somewhat seedy pawn shops in Las Vegas during a 2008 weekend visit to the city.

The series is filmed in Las Vegas, Nevada, where it chronicles the daily activities at the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, a 24-hour family business opened in 1989 and originally operated by patriarch Richard "Old Man" Harrison, his son Rick Harrison, Rick's son Corey "Big Hoss" Harrison, and Corey's childhood friend, Austin "Chumlee" Russell. Pawn Stars is an American reality television series, shown on History, and produced by Leftfield Pictures.
