pawnstarsgems, united states' of dellas, Dallas, TX (2026)

10/03/2026

In the 1920s, this was the most feared gun in America. They called it the Tommy Gun. 🔫

It was designed by a U.S. Army general, John T. Thompson, during World War I — he wanted soldiers to have a "trench broom" that could sweep an enemy trench clean. The first production guns rolled out of C**t's factory in 1921. They fired .45 caliber rounds at a terrifying rate, and Prohibition-era gangsters quickly turned them into the weapon of the Chicago underworld — the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929 made it infamous forever.

But the Thompson was never just a gangster's gun. The FBI adopted it, and when World War II broke out, Auto-Ordnance and Savage Arms built roughly 1.7 million Thompsons for American, British, and Allied troops. Soldiers carried them from Normandy to the Pacific islands. The early C**t-made guns, especially the 1928 Navy models, were built like fine machinery — and that is why collectors pay so much for them today: a well-preserved original C**t Thompson, properly registered, routinely brings $25,000 to $45,000 or more at auction.

Photo: Swedish Army Museum, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

10/02/2026

Antique Frank Wesson Pocket Pistol | Pawn Stars

10/01/2026

For 1,400 years, nobody on Earth could read Egyptian hieroglyphs. Then soldiers found this rock. 🗿

In July 1799, French troops under Napoleon were rebuilding an old fort near the town of Rashid — Rosetta — in Egypt when they pulled a slab of black stone out of the dirt. It carried the same royal decree written three times: in hieroglyphs, in everyday Demotic script, and in ancient Greek. Scholars could read the Greek. Suddenly they had a translation key.

The British seized the stone after defeating the French, and it has sat in the British Museum since 1802. In 1822, a young Frenchman named Jean-François Champollion finally cracked the code — and with it, the entire written world of ancient Egypt came back to life: temple walls, tomb inscriptions, 3,000 years of history, readable again. It has never been for sale. Some things are simply beyond price.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

10/01/2026

A 2,000-year-old clay jar that might be a battery. Nobody can prove it either way. ⚡

In 1936, near the village of Khujut Rabu outside Baghdad, workers dug up a small clay pot. Inside it: a tube of rolled copper, an iron rod, all sealed together with bitumen. Wilhelm König, director of the National Museum of Iraq, looked at it and said something wild — this thing is a galvanic cell. Fill it with vinegar or grape juice, and it gives off about one volt of electricity. A battery, 1,800 years before Alessandro Volta invented one.

The theories piled up: electroplating gold onto jewelry, ancient pain relief, priests using little shocks to make statues seem alive during rituals. MythBusters even rebuilt one in 2005 and confirmed it works. But mainstream archaeologists are not convinced — no electroplated objects from that era have ever been found, and similar jars look like they held scrolls or ritual items. The original artifact went missing in the 2003 looting of the Iraq museum. The debate is still open.

Diagram: Chatsam / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

10/01/2026

The most expensive car ever sold was not a Ferrari. 🏎️

In 1955, Mercedes engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut built himself the ultimate company car. He took the engine from the championship-winning W196 Formula One racer, wrapped it in a lightweight silver body, and created the 300 SLR "Uhlenhaut Coupe" — the fastest road-going car on the planet at the time, good for around 290 km/h. Only two were ever built, and both stayed inside Mercedes for 67 years.

Then, on May 5, 2022, Mercedes did the unthinkable. In a secret RM Sotheby's auction at their own museum in Stuttgart, with ten collectors bidding by phone, one of the two coupes sold for €135 million — about $143 million — shattering every car record ever set. Mercedes put the money into a scholarship fund for young engineers. The second car still sits in the museum, on public display.

Photo: Guywelch2000 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

10/01/2026

Two farmhands, one quiet card game — and a $250 million price tag. 🎨

In the early 1890s, Paul Cézanne painted five versions of The Card Players. His models were not aristocrats or actors — they were local farmhands, some of whom worked on his family's own estate in Provence. There is no drama in the scene. No money changing hands, no moral lesson. Just two men, heads down, lost in their cards. Critics called it "human still life."

That quiet revolution in how a painting could be built — planes of color, geometry over imitation — is why Picasso and Matisse called Cézanne "the father of us all." One version of the series, long hidden in the private collection of Greek shipping magnate George Embiricos, was sold in a secret 2011 deal to the royal family of Qatar for around $250 million — a world record at the time. (The photo here shows the Courtauld Gallery's version of the same famous series.)

Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

09/30/2026

This revolver was the most powerful handgun on Earth for almost 90 years. 🔫

Back in 1846, Texas Ranger Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker was tired of single-shot pistols. He wrote to gunmaker Samuel C**t with a simple request: build me a revolver with real stopping power. C**t delivered. The result weighed four and a half pounds, had a 9-inch barrel, and packed twice the gunpowder of a normal revolver — .44 caliber thunder in your hand.

Only 1,100 were ever made: 1,000 for the U.S. Army and 100 for civilians. Walker carried two of his namesake guns into the Mexican-American War — and was killed in battle in 1847, the very same year his revolver was born. Today it is the official handgun of the state of Texas, and a pristine example complete with its original case sold at Rock Island Auction for $1.84 million, making it the most expensive single fi***rm ever sold at auction.

Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Wikimedia Commons (CC0, public domain).

09/30/2026

It's just a little piece of cardboard from a cigarette pack — and it's the holy grail of sports cards.

Between 1909 and 1911, the American To***co Company slipped baseball cards into cigarette packs to stiffen the packaging and get kids and fans hooked on collecting. The rarest of them all pictures Honus Wagner, the Pittsburgh shortstop who was one of the first five players ever voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Here's why it's so scarce: Wagner asked the to***co company to pull his card. The story most people tell is that he didn't want kids buying ci******es just to get his picture — though some say it was really about money. Either way, production stopped early, and fewer than 60 copies are known to exist today.

The card has been breaking records for over a century. The most famous copy, once owned by hockey legend Wayne Gretzky, has changed hands for millions. And the story isn't over: in August 2026, a copy known as the "Die-Cut Wagner" sold for $1,337,263 at Love of the Game Auctions — a record for a CGC-certified sports card.

From a free gift inside a pack of smokes to a seven-figure treasure. That's the power of rarity.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain; scan from the Burdick Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art).

09/30/2026

Chum Spent $3,800 on Swords Without Calling Anyone. The Expert Said About $13,000 | Pawn Stars

09/30/2026

He Wanted a Championship Ring as His Engagement Ring | Pawn Stars

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