Rick Harrison is a businessman and reality television star with a net worth of $8 million. His family owns a famous pawn shop in Las Vegas called World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop. It’s part of a History Channel series called Pawn Stars. He is the co-owner of the shop along with his father; they’ve been in business together since 1989.
Richard Kevin “Rick” Harrison was born in North Carolina on March 22, 1965. He’s the third child of his father and his mother. There is some talk that the family is distantly related to President William Henry Harrison, but there isn’t any proof this is true and Harrison himself doesn’t believe that it is. When Harrison’s family was transferred to California in the late 1960s, the entire family went with. He dropped out of school in the 10th grade in San Diego to pursue his business venture, which was earning $2,000 per week selling knock-off Gucci bags. It wasn’t until another decade and a half later that the family relocated yet again to Las Vegas.
As a child, Harrison suffered from epileptic seizures. At the age of 17, he and his girlfriend announced they were having a baby and getting married. She miscarried their child and the couple decided to marry anyway. Two months after their wedding, she was pregnant again and Harrison’s first child, Richard Corey Harrison, was born in 1983. Two years later, their second son, Adam Harrison, was born. It wasn’t long after their second son was born that the couple decided to call it quits. Harrison’s wife walked away from him and the kids and he and his next wife decided to raise the boys as their own.
Eight years after moving to Las Vegas, Harrison and his father decided to open their own pawn shop, which they named Gold & Silver Pawn Shop. The location was only 2 miles from the famed strip in the middle of Vegas, and the father-son duo made themselves a lot of money in their pawn shop. A decade after opening their shop, they were making millions. By 2005, they were giving customers more than $3 million per year, taking in an estimated interest of almost $1 million.
The biggest item they take in and sell at the pawn shop is jewelry, and now that the show is so famous, the business has nearly doubled. The same year that the show premiered, Harrison was awarded the Pawnbroker of the Year award by the National Pawnbroker’s Association.
The show was not an immediate success. Harrison actually spent more than four years pitching his idea about a pawn shop to local television stations and national media companies only to be turned down each time. It wasn’t until 2008 that Leftfield Productions approached Harrison with an idea for a show featuring his pawn shop. The name of the show wasn’t to be so interesting, it was going to be called Pawning History. However, someone at Leftfield thought it would be more productive to call the business Pawn Stars for marketing purposes – that person was right.
By the time 2011 began, the show was the highest-rated show on the History Channel. Since the inception of the show, Harrison and his family members have made many television appearances on television shows such as The Middle and iCarly. Harrison recently became the spokesperson for a shaving care product for men by the name of Micro Touch One Razor.
Finally, Harrison is an author. He wrote his first book in 2011, which actually reaches as high as 22 on the New York Times Best Seller list that summer. His personal life is a bit more complicated. He’s been divorced twice, has three children and is currently married to his third wife, whom he married in 2013 in a Laguna Beach affair. He has no children with his third wife. His two oldest sons came from his first wife and his youngest was with his second wife.
Harrison’s fortune comes primarily from his business. However, the business owner and reality television star is also paid for each episode of his reality show as well as royalties from his book and other merchandise. His net worth is an estimated $8 million thanks to his business mind.
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