“The day I walk through that door and it isn’t
fun, that’s when I’ll quit”
Old Man rarely gets attached to his wares. “I’m in the sec- ondhand business,” he says. “I can’t fall in love with it or it don’t work.“ But that doesn’t mean he has no sense of nostalgia for his own possessions — espe- cially his cars. “My first car when I was 16 was a 1950 Plymouth four-door ex-Baltimore taxi cab. It had been run through hell.” From there he moved on to a gunmetal gray over pink 1951 Ford Victoria, and he still has his sights set on finding another. “They’re rare,” he says. “Finding a ’51 Vic is very, very, hard.”
CARS BY THE HUNDREDS He’s always been a Mopar man, however, and has owned several: a 1957 Plymouth station wagon, a ’64 Dodge Dart wagon, a ’65 Barracuda and a ’70 Road Runner. “I never owned a De- Soto though. Some of the 1950s DeSotos are gorgeous.”
The Old Man is no keeper of garage queens, and he usually takes one or two of his cars out on the weekends, even for quick trips to the grocery store. “I try to get them cranked up once a week, once every 10 days.”
“Son, I’m just not gonna take any less than that for it.” The author and the Old Man talk old car commerce before a vintage Dodge Brothers.
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If he has a gripe — and if you’ve watched the show, you know the Old Man has gripes — it has to do with the look of today’s cars. “When I was five, six, seven, you could look at a car and tell one car from another. But they all look the same now. It’s hard to tell the difference between the Cadil- lac and the Chevrolet today. Don’t get me wrong, the technology they have in the cars today is phenomenal, but they ought to do something about the style. To me the last American car that had any style was the Plymouth Prowler. That’s one car I’m gonna own one of these days.”
By his own count, the Old Man has bought and sold several hundred cars over the years. “The one that I was happiest to get rid of was my ’73 Cadillac. It was a nightmare from the word go.” In San Diego, he once missed out on a car advertised as a 1954 Jaguar Sedan. “I go up to look at it,” he says, “but it had sold five minutes earlier for $800. And it wasn’t a sedan — it was an XK 120.”
Thanks to the success of the show, the Old Man can afford more than he used to. His 1957 Chevy 150 is com- pletely customized, with an LS1 V-8. The car itself is well known; it’s the same ’57 Chevy that Rick surprised his dad with for his 70th birthday during an episode of “Pawn Stars.” “I had no idea whatsoever,” says the Old Man. “It just shocked the hell out of me. I really like the car and it’s a head turner. I’m very careful with it when I drive it. It’s extremely fast.”
His cars are a mix between com- pletely stock and mild custom. Both Imperials, for example, “are stock from the word go.” The ’62 Cadillac has a Buick front end so the Old Man could fit it with disc brakes. And his ’55 Ford pickup has a Corvette engine in it. “That’s a squirrelly little bastard,” he says. “It’ll take you where you want to go in real time.”
Though retired from the Navy, the Old Man has no plans to leave the pawn business. “I enjoy what I do,” he says. “Retirement is overrated. I have friends who retired, and a lot of them have admitted that they’re not happy with it. People have asked me many times, ‘Well, Richard, when are you going to retire?’ I tell them that the day I walk through that door and it isn’t fun, that’s when I’ll quit.”
Spend time with the Old Man at his pawn shop and you’ll see that be- hind the gruff exterior is a guy who enjoys his work, enjoys his cars and, despite what you might have seen on the small screen, enjoys working with his family. He’s got his own hit real- ity show and a garage full of all the cars he loves. So what’s next for the Old Man? It’s simple, he says. “After I figure out my f#@%ing taxes, I’ll start looking for a Plymouth Prowler.”
For more of the Pawn Stars interview check out
hagerty.com/pawnstar
PHOTO: JUSTIN WARNES
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