In Las Vegas, history has a price, not a past

As a teenager in Las Vegas, I spent my weekends trawling through secondhand stores and pawn shops, an archaeologist of sorts in a city with no history. The Las Vegas of my childhood was the unapologetic and unsavory Las Vegas of $4.99, all-you-can-eat, discount fun. That version of the city would fade to the margins a few years later, though even the kiddie casinos and family shooting ranges couldn't kill it completely.

In my Las Vegas of the '80s, there were no thrift store gallerias like today, no fluorescent-lit, supersize pawn shop chains. Twenty years later, it seems the pawn shops have crept out of the shadows and refashioned themselves as decent, upstanding and family-friendly. The Gold & Silver Pawn Shop is now featured in a History Channel reality show, "Pawn Stars," which will air new episodes later this month.

But back then, people came to Vegas to liquidate their old lives. The way I remember it, the discarded stuff was mostly stashed in dingy downtown establishments near nickel-slot saloons and 7-Elevens where locals blew their weekly paychecks on video poker. Pawn shops were conveniently located near the courthouse and the drive-through wedding chapels. They were mysteriously well supplied. The items painted intimate but hazy impressions of their former owners: an intact VHS tape collection, a full set of wedding china, a child's bicycle. In a city where the past is just a motif, pawn shops were my museums.

Pawn shops thrive in the United States. They are the country's original institutions of consumer credit, offering quick cash (sale or loan) for goods. Giant retailers such as EZPAWN and Cash America offer a Costco-like setting. Since the economy soured and bank loans dried up, Americans are becoming increasingly reacquainted with such stores. Pawn America, a chain in the Midwest, reported a 15 to 20 percent increase in revenue in 2008.

Offering a window into this world is "Pawn Stars," whose viewers watch the amusing ins and outs of pawn shop life and learn about the business. The show is pulling record ratings for the History Channel. In one clip, proprietor Rick Harrison boasts about a 2001 Super Bowl ring once owned by a player he doesn't name with a story he doesn't remember. We learn instead how Super Bowl rings are made and how their worth is determined. In another clip, Harrison shows off two anonymous Olympic bronze medals, explaining that their value is determined by how, where and when they were won.

But why are Gold & Silver's customers pawning their most cherished belongings? The show quietly omits that the man who once owned the Super Bowl ring is former New England Patriot Brock Williams, that he pawned the ring for $2,000 at 3:00 a.m. one night in 2006 and that he is now on disability. The bronze medals were once the pride of long-jumper Joe Greene, who fell on hard times when he was injured just before the 2000 Olympic Games.

There's a gap between the stories behind these items and Harrison's, and his viewers', interest in them as disembodied objects of value. That gap is the difference between a souvenir and memorabilia. Pawn shop owners consider most things people own souvenirs: They have personal value, but not much worth in the marketplace.

Sometimes, souvenirs become memorabilia. This magical transformation comes from their relation to events (World Series, war) or people (sports figure, decorated soldier) of importance. The difference between acquiring memorabilia and selling it is the difference between the elation of gaining recognition and the heartache of losing it.

It makes sense that the latest (and perhaps final) chapter in O.J. Simpson's saga featured an armed robbery aimed at his own memorabilia. It happened, fittingly, in a Las Vegas hotel room. Simpson used to be an American hero, the kind that begins life as a poor, fatherless kid with rickets in the projects and becomes one of the great football players of his generation. When he broke into Room 1203 of the faded Palace Station Hotel on Sept. 13, 2007, who could sympathize with his feeble attempt to reclaim old jerseys and footballs, presumably for a little quick cash?

Few showed up in the courtroom, and few seem to care that he remains in jail. "This is not a case about sports memorabilia," said Simpson attorney Yale Galanter during the trial. "It's about personal property. . . . The only person on the planet who cares about this property is this man." Though the jury apparently felt otherwise, there is truth in Galanter's statement.

The story of Simpson is of a man fallen from grace; his memorabilia, on the other hand, will always tell the story of a hero. But no one fully retrieves the past -- and definitely not in Vegas.

We all tend to write our biographies with our belongings. Relationships, memories and ambitions are fleeting -- could we trust they existed without rings and photographs and awards? We cheer when we find that our stuff is desirable to others, and we think that it makes us a little more desirable, too (thus the popularity of "Antiques Roadshow," still PBS's highest-rated program). Sometimes the loss of our belongings is a sacrifice, a deal we make in exchange for a temporary satisfaction -- a gambling thrill, a one-night stand, the electric bill. (Some say Queen Isabella of Spain hawked her jewelry to fund Christopher Columbus's expeditions to America.)

Pawn shops and junk stores are the Smithsonians of missed dreams and second chances. Behind all the discarded things lies a trove of American stories. They are often sad stories, but honest ones, too. Like all museums, pawn shops reveal something about human ambition, and how we measure our journeys with the treasure we collect along the way. Only, in pawn shops, the trip doesn't always have a happy ending.

Stefany Anne Golberg lives in New York and writes for the Smart Set.