Pawn Stars: Rebecca Reveals Military Documents Worth HUGE $$$ (Season 7) | History

Hey, what's going on? These are eight different scrolls signed by different presidents that follow the career of a soldier from second lieutenant to brigadier general. Well, basically you have a guy's

military

career and these are all his promotions, yeah, certificates or whatever he had. I have all his medals here too okay, we have the lieutenant colonel and that was under Theodore Roosevelt along with William Taft as secretary of war, yeah, that's a big wow factor. Today I came to the

pawn

shop to try to sell my

military

documents

. that have been signed by different presidents. I'm looking to get at least 10-12k.

I'm getting married next summer and we need to finance this. Who was this guy? This was uh lorenzo w cook second lieutenant in 1866. andrew johnson was President, some people consider him the worst president in the

history

of the United States and we have Grant in '68. Wasn't Grant like a complete alcoholic or something, oh Yes, I smoked about 20 cigarettes a day and drank about a quarter of them. at least a liter of whiskey a day good life um but he was a very good president okay you just have a lot of paperwork here yeah I know this is a great chester arthur 1883 92 so we have benjamin harrison uh mckinley 1897 and theodore roosevelt again. and taft again with the brigadier general this is the brigadier general it seems that the guy rose quite a bit in the military ranks oh yes, reaching the position of general is quite rare this is quite incredible there have only been 44 presidents and this guy He has Documents signed by seven of them all appear to be attached to one soldier, which makes for an interesting story and may be a great selling point for collectors.

So how much do you want for this stuff? I was thinking about 10-12,000. um, that's a lot of money, do you mind if I have someone look at it all? It's okay, sometimes secretaries sign there. I want to see which ones the president actually signed and she'll know. It's okay, it's okay. I'm fine with that. It's hard to put a price on it. I have a pretty good idea what the presidential signatures refer to and most of the medals can be looked up in a book, but as a lifetime collection of this guy, we have something quite unique here.

I just want to know which one. of these signatures are real and they are not because you know, I just know that the presidents many of these were signed by secretaries, it is a matter of what we call authorized forgeries when it is secretarial or stamped or something like that and that is much more common in In times of war, when there are many different commissions, so let's take a look at these here and see if they are all authentic. Okay, I'm going to get out my little toy. This is one of my favorite things. The value of these.

The

documents

are all in those signatures so if they're not real we're seeing very little this is Benjamin Harrison right yeah let me see the uh roosevelt theo and taft together oh cool that's what you want Johnson , the main thing. What we are looking for here is how the characters are formed, especially if it is a secretary's signature. The characters will be similar to the original but not exactly the same. Another thing you have is that the Secretary of War during Chester Arthur's presidency was Robert Todd Lincoln, that's the only one. of abraham lincoln's children surviving to adulthood, so that's pretty interesting now that one of these signatures isn't real, okay, which one, andrew johnson, okay, johnson notoriously injured his hand a couple of months after his presidency and started wearing a seal if you look very closely. there you can see the way the ink adheres to the paper, it has a little more dots, there are bits of white inside the ink showing where the stamp didn't press all the way in, so this right here is stamped, the good news is that all the rest of them are really cool, I like it, so you did pretty well, I mean, considering how many there are here, um and again, it's not, it's not counterfeit, it's an authorized counterfeit, so what do you think are they

worth

?

They are the pieces. Of the hole that is

worth

more money, the set is worth it if you have it in a group, it tells a story and that is what collectors really like, it is the grand story, it is worth a thousand on its own, the Teddy Roosevelt is worth about 750 on its own, but you put them together With this file you have the original tube and everything you can search for up to ten thousand dollars. Alright, thanks girl, you're the best, you're welcome. Usually you see these documents individually and they're interesting because they're signed by a president, but in this case you're following someone's life and that's really cool because you can see all the different details of their promotions and the wars they must have served in and That's what historians love.

This takes time to sell. valuable, but who are you selling it to? Do you understand what I'm saying? That being said, I'll give you five thousand dollars about 65. How about five thousand dollars 62? I'm not going to see any money out of this for at least a year, so if you want the five thousand, I have five thousand, that's what I can do. I really think you probably bought this for a lot less than that deal. Okay, write them down son, oh, my fiancee will definitely be happy. I spent two thousand. dollars to get this collection 5 000 is a big number will allow me to marry you