Additional Coverage:
- ‘Pawn Stars’ guest brings a rare statue for Rick Harrison — but there was one major problem (marketrealist.com)
A “Pawn Stars” episode highlighted the importance of expert authentication when a guest named Ray presented a remarkably preserved Apsara statue, purportedly a rare 10th-century Indian sculpture. Rick Harrison, immediately suspicious of the statue’s pristine condition, noted that genuine sandstone artifacts of that age typically show significant wear. Ray’s claim that the statue had been protected in a suitcase for centuries only deepened Harrison’s doubts.
Harrison, wary of replicas often sold to tourists, consulted Dr. Phineas Kastle, an expert on ancient artifacts.
Dr. Kastle, while initially impressed, quickly identified inconsistencies.
The statue’s preservation was too perfect for a 10th-century sandstone piece, and its posture didn’t reflect the traditional depiction of an Apsara, a celestial being typically portrayed in flight. The clincher came when Dr.
Kastle pointed out the statue’s distinctly Cambodian facial features, supported by an image of a nearly identical statue from the Angkorian temples. He estimated the statue’s true age to be between 75 and 150 years old.
Ray’s initial asking price of $5,000 quickly dropped to $1,800 after the expert’s assessment. While Dr. Kastle valued the statue between $1,200 and $2,400, Harrison, leveraging his position, negotiated the price down to a final $800, leaving Ray with a significantly smaller profit than he’d anticipated.