Everything I Needed to Know I Learned on TV

Chris here.

Jen and I were watching the history channel's Pawn Stars (episode title "Off The Wagon" which originally aired 2/15/10) the other night and were initially thrilled to see somebody bring in a W.J. McElroy Confederate sword in. Rick, the shop's co-owner, did the right thing and brought in an expert to do an appraisal. Our initial thrill wore off when his "weapons expert" Sean came in and basically admitted he could not authenticate it and said that there are so many fake swords running around that it was not even worth it for Rick to make an offer.

From an antiques research standpoint, the great thing about Pawn Stars is that unlike Antiques Roadshow it portrays a rubber-meets-the-road business with an eye solidly on the bottom line (as opposed to the pie-in-the-sky auction/insurance prices pulled from the ether on Antiques Roadshow)... the thing that stinks about Pawn Stars is that it portrays a rubber-meets-the-road business with an eye solidly on the bottom line! On the show the store's operators and consulting "experts" often shoot from the hip on whether it is worthwhile for the shop to buy something. The shop, like a Vegas casino "house," always wins. The shop operators usually play it safe and only make an offer on things they are reasonably sure they can make a profit on. Buying something that is potentially worthless (like a fake Confederate sword) would not add up for them.

What I am trying to say is that I don't blame the shop for not making an offer, even low, for the sword. Spending thousands on something that could turn out to be worthless is not good business sense. I don't even blame the "expert" Sean for the advice he gave Rick- again, it was good business sense.

What I DO blame that Sean guy for is not living up to his billing as an "expert." Confederate edged weapons constitute a very nuanced sub-group of the general weapons category. I'm sure when Rick from the shop called Sean he explained that he wanted Sean's opinion on a Confederate sword. If Sean didn't know enough about Confederate swords he should have just said so.

I guess I am just a little sensitive on this topic because it was a McElroy sword that was in question. We have a VERY NICE McElroy sword on consignment in the shop... we are asking $25,000 for it which is probably a steal given the condition it is in. Understandably I cringe when I hear "McElroy" and "fake" uttered in the same sentence.

What makes Jen and I even more sensitive on this point is that recently we had a chance to show the shop's swords to a very well-respected authority on Confederate militaria and he basically said the same thing that Sean did on Pawn Stars- that he had his doubts / didn't know.

That kind of thing kinda makes me quake in my boots. Has faking of Confederate swords become so epidemic that even the experts can't separate the wolves from the sheep anymore? Is that the advice being given to collectors- don't even bother trying to buy Confederate swords because so many are fake?

In my conversation with the authority I mentioned above, he brought up the fact that the only trusted guide to Confederate swords is Albaugh's "Confederate Edged Weapons" from 1960, and most everything else is speculation from, as the authority consulted put it, from "the gun show crowd," and who knows if any of that body of lore has any truth to it?

What all this is leading up to is a fevered defense of the McElroy sword we have in the shop.

Stay tuned...