I love that show! It is quite entertaining.... I just wish they'd lose that Chumlee idiot. Seriously, would you keep him around as an employee?
That store has done so well in it's past it can afford to be on TV. Plus, it's in Vegas.... so I would imagine they get more traffic than ever from gamblers hocking their wares to feed that habit. That has got to be the holy grail of locations for any aspiring pawn broker.
For lazy or uneducated sellers to get a "quick" sale on their items, that place seems okay. I've seen them pay thousand$ out for items I wouldn't give pennies for. I think them being on TV as they are somewhat forces them to give more fair deals to those lazy buyers. And I bet it is easy for them to get people on the show for free. Think about it.... if you had an item of which you had no clue of its value or even where to begin researching it, much less how to actually sell it in order to extract that maximum value.... wouldn't you be inclined to go on TV for free in order to have it's value estimated by some of the "professionals" they bring? There is the possibility that those guys are fakes, thouth. But, I've seen plenty of weapons, historical and simply rare items that were featured on the show where the seller had obviously grossy understimated the value. And when they found out what they had they decided to keep the item. I say good for those people!
Also, they've been in the business so long that they more than likely have a huge network of antique dealers and specialty auction buyers such that they can extract maximum value for many of those very rare items.
I remember times before ebay when you could buy complete camera outfits with lots of lenses for pennies on the dollar. Or pick up a killer deal on a top quality stereo component. Yea, you had to be an informed buyer and be able to spot the good from the average from the bad..... But, the days of leveraging that knowledge are long gone. Now, the only places to leverage that kind of knowledge seems to be estate sales, yard sales or thrift stores. MB84 had it right.... as a whole I also think eBay has tremendously benefitted pawn shop owners. Most of the pawn shops I've been in recently have a PC right at their fingertips, ready to research the value of items coming in and for pricing of items for sale. As far as I'm concerned, pawn shops are really only good for power tools or maybe some cheap DVDs anymore.
That doesn't mean I don't still look, though...
I will say that I recently bought a pair of fully working Technics 1200's, with a low end Stanton DJ CD player, cheap realistic mixer, all in a Gemini Turntable coffin for $275. They even let me put it on layaway. I do think that was a great deal, but more the exception than the norm. When I get those decks home in a month or two, I'll clean up the gear, part that set out and at least double my money.
Now that I think about it, I also bought a Canon camera lens for DSLR for $40 which would have normally cost about $120. But, that took some major haggling while the pawn shop owner was hunting back and quoting the pricing range they were seeing for similar lenses on ebay. I had to explain the difference between "image stabilization" vs. a normal lens over and over and had given up. After I finally told them to "go ahead and sell it on ebay.... so you can deal with listing it, the ebay and paypal fees, and packaging it up for shipping and the potential BS from the buyer" had then turned to leave the store that the pawn shop owner finally stepped in and gave me the price I offered. LOL!
... IF any of you guys are TV producers !!
I mean, they have a show about backwoods, creepy cajuns in the bayou. 
