Is Pawn Stars Fake? The Truth About The Popular Reality Show

The daily operations and family dynamics of the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, as documented in the History Channel series "Pawn Stars," have made the series a fan favorite for years. But as is usually the case when it comes to reality television, there's a secret about "Pawn Stars" you weren't supposed to know — not all of what you see is 100% real. 

In a typical "Pawn Stars" episode, various customers bring their unique antique and vintage items to the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop to have them assessed by the show's main cast: Rick Harrison, Corey "Big Hoss" Harrison, and Corey's friend Austin "Chumlee" Russell (Rick's father Richard "The Old Man" Harrison was also a cast member before he died in 2018). The show cycles between the appraisal process, the customer's backstory, and the interactions between the shop staff. Most filming takes place in the pawn shop showroom.

But it's not called "Pawn Stars" for no reason. A healthy dose of show biz is sprinkled into the day-to-day operations of World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn (after all, Rick is even friends with the Trumps). That includes careful customer selection, coaching, information feeding, and private filming, as described by Travis Benton, the pawn shop's general manager, to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "We all want the same thing — to be successful," he said.

The diversity and uniqueness of the items featured on "Pawn Stars" make the show as appealing as it is, but this is more deliberate than you might think. General manager Travis Benton said shop staff will notify show producers when a particularly interesting item comes in. If the producers deem it worthy of filming, they'll instruct the sellers regarding how to act. Fellow pawn shop employee Rocco Landi told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that sellers had been cut from the show because they appeared too awkward on camera. "It's a give-and-take thing," Landi said. Still, the show isn't scripted, per se.

As executive producer Brent Montgomery told Odyssey in 2014, TV audiences see a careful blend of fed information and improv. Montgomery said scripters would guide characters (employees and the sellers) regarding what to say. While Montgomery never told the show's stars how to price an item, he did encourage them to buy things even if they wouldn't have done so off-camera. "If we had a show where they never bought anything, it wouldn't work well," Montgomery explained. 

Even the background shoppers of the show are a little staged. According to Benton, about "one in 100" visitors to the Las Vegas pawn shop are actually there to sell an item. Otherwise, the staff typically shuffles tourist visitors out of the showroom when it's time to film. Absolute reality TV? Eh, no. Binge-worthy just the same? Absolutely.