Pawn Stars is really Economics 101. When you watch the show, you are really seeing the stock market at work. I mean who doesn't dream of getting in on the ground floor of a hot stock when it is selling for a dollar, and seeing it skyrocket?
I'm guessing most of the respondents so far do not really grasp the concept of "Buy Low, Sell High?"
This immutable law of the universe says, "You make your money when you obtain an item - NOT when you sell it."
Ask ten people that question, "When do you make your money selling an item?" and 8 out of 10 will say, "When someone buys it." Which is wrong, because if you bought a thing for a "fair" price of $100 - and it is only worth $100 - then you got nowhere.
The Pawn Star guys are not selling their services or working for someone else. They create retail prices, not trade them back and forth. That creation occurs at the front end.
On the flip side, many people are plain dumb as to value. "Every frog praises their own pond," of course, but impartial estimation is the name of the game. It doesn't matter what you have in it, or what your Uncle Louie told you its worth. It is only worth what people will pay to own it. That is the basis of ebay - you cannot get more than people will pay. Anyone who has sold on ebay, or even the classifieds, faces that truth at some point.
Flatly put, most people have no realistic idea of what things are worth because they don't do the research themselves. If they did, and they had anything of real value, they would not take them to a pawn shop. Pawn dealers are for those in a hurry or who are too lazy to do the due diligence the Pawn Stars have already done.
On a more personal note, bikes are sold the same way as the P-Stars do things. Frames are obtained from a job shop, often in Asia where labor is cheap, and a bunch of stock components are purchased - all at the lowest possible cost, of course. Everything is then assembled, again at the lowest cost, and sold to an agent/reseller (the LBS) at a beneficial remuneration quotient... fancy lingo for a profit.
The LBS then adds on their own profit layers, pricing them higher than THEY bought it for. One difference with them over the Pawn Stars, however, is this essentially kills negotiation. THEY set the price and you pay it... or go elsewhere. That no one complains about this situation, but pounds the pawn broker into the ground, is the most interesting thing.
This, too, is how things work, I suppose.