Rick Harrison’s Net Worth (Updated 2023)

Last Updated on March 3, 2023

Who Is Rick Harrison?

Richard Kevin Harrison, popularly known as Rick Harrison, is an American business owner, reality TV personality, and the current owner of the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop located in Las Vegas, Nevada. The shop is featured on History Channel in the reality TV show Pawn Stars, which is currently the channel’s biggest show.
When Rick was two years old, his family relocated to San Diego due to his father’s job in the navy. Harrison then attended Taft Middle School in San Diego but dropped out to sell fake Gucci bags in the tenth grade.
In 1981, fourteen years after moving to San Diego, the Harrison family relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada. It was there Harrison met his first wife, Kim.
That same year, Harrison’s father opened his first secondhand store, the Gold & Silver Coin Shop, on Las Vegas Boulevard South. Harrison was a very hard-working individual. When he wasn’t repossessing cars at night, he was working in his father’s store during the day.
In 1989, the long-sought dream of Harrison and his dad came to pass; they converted their coin shop into a pawn shop. This is how the world-famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop came to be.
The pawnshop grew so much that by 2005, Harrison and his father were making approximately $700,000 interest from loaning roughly $3 million annually.
In 2010, the National Pawnbrokers Association awarded Harrison with the Pawnbroker of the Year Award for his contributions in informing the public about the pawn industry.

Quick Facts

Early Life And Career Information

Born on March 22, 1965, in Lexington, North Carolina Rick Harrison is the third child of his father, Richard Benjamin Harrison Jr., a U.S. Navy veteran, and his mother, Joanne Rhue Harrison.
Harrison had an elder sister, Sherry Joanne Harrison, who died at age six due to down syndrome. He has two brothers: an older one, Joseph Kent Harrison, and a younger one, Chris Harrison.
At the tender age of two, Rick’s father was transferred to San Diego, and because of this, the whole Harrison family had to relocate. At age eight, Harrison experienced epileptic seizures, which caused him to always be in bed. Since he was always in bed, he developed the habit of reading and fell in love with it.
Harrison attended Taft Middle School, San Diego, but later dropped out to start a business selling fake Gucci bags in his tenth grade. The business paid him handsomely as he claimed to be making $2000 from it weekly.
In 1981, Harrison’s father opened his first secondhand store, the Gold & Silver Coin Shop, on Las Vegas Boulevard South. Five years later, the store relocated to Fremont Street. Unfortunately, after two years at that location, the Harrisons lost their lease and moved back to Las Vegas Boulevard.
Harrison and his father had long dreamt of converting their coin shop into a pawn shop, but that dream couldn’t come to fruition because of a 1955 Las Vegas law that limited the issuing of new pawn licenses.
Not wavering, Harrison called the city statistician every week so that as soon as the Vegas population reached 250,000, they could apply for a pawn license. By 1989 the city’s population reached that number, and the Harrisons got their much sought-after pawn license.
That same year Harrison and his father opened the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop close to the Las Vegas Strip. By 2005, the Harrisons were loaning out about $3 million annually and making roughly $700,000 profit.
Harrison spent four years trying to sell the idea of forming a reality show around his pawnshop, but he wasn’t successful. Fortunately, after kicking around HBO and YouTube, Harrison’s idea intrigued Nancy Dubuc of the History Channel, and the TV network decided to buy it. The show was titled Pawn Stars and was History Channel’s highest-rated program in 2011.
On June 7, 2011, Harrison released an autobiography titled License to Pawn: Deals, Steals, and My Life at the Gold & Silver, and on June 26, 2011, the book reached No. 22 on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Rick Harrison’s Net Worth

Rick has made a fortune from his family’s pawnshop as well as the shop’s reality show Pawn Stars. The Pawn Stars head honcho is respected as one of the big names in the pawn industry.
As of 2023, Rick Harrison’s net worth was estimated to be $9 million.

Lessons From The Life Of Rick Harrison

Be Careful When Working With Family
“The best part of my business is working with my family, and the worst part of my business is working with my family. There’s a lot of ground rules that have got to be set before you start and everyone’s got to agree to them. If one person’s putting in a lot more work than the other person and that one person wants more money because of it, that could cause problems in a family-run business.” ~Rick Harrison
Working with family can be fun and exciting but if there are no rules in place, there won’t be peace and order in both the business and family. It is important that everyone respects their roles and responsibilities, follows the rules set in place and keeps things strictly professional.
You Can’t Know It All
Regardless of the pawnshop staff’s expertise and vast knowledge, they don’t claim to know everything. They often know what an item is worth, but if they don’t, they find out by calling in a specialist.
Rick has a group of experts he calls to verify the authenticity of an item. He’s not ashamed to tell a customer he has no information about the item.