History Channel's show "Pawn Stars" is getting a lot of heat from a man whose $50,000 worth of coins were melted down. The owner of those coins is filing a complaint against "Pawn Stars" in the court of law.
According to a criminal complaint filed by the State of Nevada in Clark County Justice Court, David Walters the owner of the coins reported that the coins he owned were stolen from his home Las Vegas on November last year by his niece Jennifer Beckham. The documents suggested that David Walter kept in a bag hidden under a dresser. It contained such rare coins such as 1903 St. Gaudens $20 piece and Silver Morgan coins from 1880's. It also contained contemporary 1 oz. American buffalo gold pieces.
The complaint alleges Beckman stole the collection in installments, taking parts of it on three different occasions to Las Vegas' Gold and Silver Pawn shop, where, it says, she sold them. The shop is also the setting of History Channel's Pawn Stars.
According to Detective Watkins of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, a deposition filed with the complaint that Beckman, from her three visits to the shop on Vas Vegas Boulevard, netted a total of $12,375. He contacted Gold and Silver and attempted to place a hold on the coins, so they could be returned to Walters. But, he says, he was unable to recover them.
However it was too late, the owner did not discover the thefts until November 27, and the shop was not notified by police that the coins were stolen until December 5. By that time, they were already gone.
Pawn shops are highly regulated under Nevada law. Customers must present identification, and every item hocked must be entered into a database that police regularly review. Shops must hold hocked items for 30 to 90 days before disposing of them, giving owners time to redeem them, and police time to identify stolen goods. The law makes only a few exceptions to this holding period requirement. One is for coins: If the hocked items are "coins which are not part of jewelry," the shop can dispose of them any time it wants.
Silver and Gold's spokesperson Laura Herlovich explained that, "In a fast-moving shop, particularly our shop, because of its fame, you move things quickly." When coins come in, she says, they typically are in plastic cases, with a value already assigned them by a grader.
"We go through them," says Herlovich. "If the grader is not someone we trust, the cases are cracked open and the coins are sent out to be melted down. That was the case here. I don't know for sure, but I believe a majority were melted down. They weren't worth what he [Walters] thought they were worth."
