Pawn Stars of Bloomington

A 1986-87 Fleer Michael Jordan rookie card hangs on the wall above Jack McCrory’s office door at Ace Pawn Shop at 532 S. Walnut St.

The card sold at an auction for $82,000 in 2009.

Unfortunately, the one in McCrory’s shop isn’t real.

“That’s what we call an F.L.E.,” McCrory said. “A fine learning experience.”

McCrory owns three Ace Pawn locations in southern Indiana. He bought the Michael Jordan card from a customer several years ago without getting it authenticated first and later found out that it was a counterfeit. It stays on the wall as a reminder to be vigilant of fakes, phonies and things that are too good to be true.

At times, the top-rated History program “Pawn Stars” seems to be one such thing, according to McCrory.

“It’s interesting,” McCrory said with a long pause between his first and second words. “But it’s a bit staged. The way I understand it, Chumlee doesn’t even work for the pawn shop. He works for the production company.”

Whether that’s true or not, “Pawn Stars” has certainly caused a stir in the pawnbroking community. Its flair for the more theatrical aspects of the industry has at times raised the eyebrows of Bloomington’s pawnbrokers.

Tyrone Love, an employee at Ace Pawn, went to the show’s famed Gold & Silver Pawnshop when he was on vacation in Las Vegas to find some earrings for his wife.

“I didn’t like it. They put a guy out of the store just for looking at the camera too much,” Love said.

Bill Haggerty, a manager at TomCats Pawnshop, located at 750 W. 17th St., said he doesn’t think the show depicts a fiscally feasible way to run a pawn shop.

“We can’t call in an expert for every item that comes into the shop to get it appraised and authenticated,” Haggerty said.

Kevin Mack, an employee at TomCats, has his own hang-ups about the show. He said that rival show “Hardcore Pawn” on truTV, a show lauded for showing the human aspects of the industry, is “more like the real pawn world than ‘Pawn Stars.’”

But despite all of the issues they have with it, Bloomington’s pawnbrokers said they still watch “Pawn Stars.”

Mack said he recognizes where the show diverts from reality, but he said he still thinks it has value as a learning tool for people interested in the pawn business.

“When I watch the show, I notice them doing so many of the same things we do. Standard operating procedures are the same in Nevada or Michigan or here,” he said.

“It kind of reminds me of work,” Haggerty said.

While many people watch television to escape the workaday life, Haggerty does not. He admits that he isn’t immune to the appeal of the show, which he deems universal.

“Everyone likes to see that next treasure. You’ll see things in a pawn shop that you won’t see other places,” he said.

McCrory said he concurs.

“Viewers see a pawn shop as a place where neat used merchandise comes in,” he said, defending the show’s appeal while leaving room for another note of disagreement. “A lot of what we do is pretty routine.”

Still, the over-the-top aspects of the industry that the show plays up can also be found in local pawnbroking. Both Ace Pawn and TomCats have seen some bizarre pieces in their time in Bloomington. While some of the big-ticket items seen on “Pawn Stars” will likely never appear in either of those stores, the employees there have seen things that are every bit as stupefying as anything that’s been on the show.

“I wrote a loan on a lady’s false teeth once,” McCrory said. “We were pretty sure she’d come back for them.”

She did, but a similar transaction at TomCats didn’t end as well.

“I once bought an artificial leg,” Haggerty said. “Guy never came back for it.”

Even with these occasional extreme oddities thrown in the mix, the staffs at both stores emphasized that their day-to-day operations are much more routine than those depicted on “Pawn Stars.”

Crucially, though, Haggerty applauds the show for working to change the image of the pawnbroking industry that was allowed to prevail in pop culture for decades upon decades before it premiered.

“In movies, when someone’s in the seedy part of town, you see a pawnshop,” he said. “The show offers a human side to the business that you don’t often see.”

For that simple reason, no amount of criticism Bloomington’s pawnbrokers can level at the show will stop them from watching it from time to time.

Perhaps one day Rick Harrison will even buy a fake Michael Jordan rookie card.