What Pawn Shops Can Teach About History

Science fiction and fantasy fans love maps.  Give us a novel that has two or three maps and we’re likely to forgive at least several pages of bad writing.  I forced myself to read all of <em>Shardik</em> largely because I liked the map.  The story left me wondering what the point of it all was.  But I digress.  There is a powerful connection between maps and speculative fiction, but an even more powerful connection between maps and history.

Maps bridge history and speculative fiction in many ways, not the least of which being that a well-drawn map lends a sense of false credibility to a fictional world or story. Fantasy novelists are especially fond of archaic style (or maybe a better description would be stylistically pseudo-archaic) “hand drawn” maps, probably because of the popularity of Middle-earth maps.

I was watching a rerun of Pawn Stars on the History Channel and a guy brought an old map of Boston into the shop. They had a historical artifacts expert evaluate the map and he concluded that it had been ripped from a fairly contemporary copy of The London Magazine.

The magazine itself is a piece of history, having been founded twice (first in 1732 and then again in 1820). Pawn Stars is a high profile shop and most likely your local neighborhood pawn shop doesn’t get all the neat, interesting historical stuff that comes on the TV show. Then again, those local pawn shops could literally have the family jewels sitting behind the counter.

Years ago I took a moderately priced Seiko watch to a jeweler thinking he would be able to repair it. The salesman who spoke with me shook his head and said, “We can’t fix it. This needs an expert.” An expert? The watch was barely 20 years old, give or take. Fortunately, the gentleman sent me over to his father’s shop. His dad was the only watch repairman left in town.

Dad’s watch shop was nestled in a little wooden office — not a shack, but small enough to be of shack size. He intuitively recognized what was wrong with my watch before he opened it up (the seal had worn away around the winder and water had gotten inside). He was able to install a new movement for me, but I had to wait a couple of weeks.

That afternoon visit to the watch repairman briefly introduced me to a window on history. His shop was filled with all sorts of old timepieces, some antiques and some just once really nice clocks/watches his customers had left behind. People do leave all sorts of stuff lying around. I inherited a very valuable Wydoogen painting from a relative who found it wrapped up in an attic in her house many decades ago. My sister found a $500 diamond watch when she was just 8-9 years old (a few decades ago). Earlier this year someone told me about a local watch repair lady who has been holding on to a $10,000 watch one of her customers dropped off for repair …. 10 years ago.

Small-town jewelers, special item repair experts, and pawn store owners probably handle millions of dollars in personal wealth during the course of their careers. One can only imagine just how much of that stuff gets left behind either because the customer dies, moves away, or cannot afford to retrieve the property. How many times have we heard about baseball card collections and first edition books and comics being found in old family chests?

My grandmother had a small collection of first edition books from the late 1800s and early 1900s that she had saved from her childhood. Unfortunately, several of them were ruined by water damage when the storage facility where they were kept was damaged by weather. Later on nearly the entire collection was stolen by antique thieves who made off with various pieces of family furniture and artifacts — some of which were hundreds of years old and had been in the family for generations.

And that, of course, is the sad side of retail store historiana. Undoubtedly some of that stuff sitting on the shelf was stolen. Those cute little antique tables you find in old garage sales — if the owners cannot explain their histories, how did they come by them? There are stories tied up with old chairs, tables, and wall trees, and other old items. I know some of those stories. I know only pieces of many stories.

Your lucky find may be someone else’s heart-breaking loss. Of course, if the loss is great enough time is no barrier to claiming the recovery of lost or stolen goods. Old paintings, statuary, and archaeological artifacts that have been underground for generations are occasionally repatriated to their “rightful” owners (or the governments of the nations where they were found/stolen). The more valuable an old piece of history is, the more likely that when it surfaces someone, somewhere, is going to lay claim to it.

Experts have estimated that lost and stolen antiques, treasures, and works of art may be worth hundreds of millions — perhaps more than a billion dollars. But the monetary value of those items is only one aspect of what has been lost. The history behind these treasures is also worth something, and it’s impossible to put a price on history.

If there is one flaw in science fiction and fantasy when it comes to detailing an imaginary history, it may be that there is too little history in the stories. Professional authors will tell you that you cannot stop telling the story in order to share the history, but I’m telling you that the story suffers when the author only implies there is history associated with a character, an item, or a place and then doesn’t deliver the lecture.

Good writing gets the history in there, somehow. The anecdotes become part of the story. People will argue over that fictional history almost as passionately as they’ll argue over real history — sometimes the fictional history will matter more to them. Maybe what we need is a few more pawn shops in our imaginary worlds and a few less castles on cliffs overlooking stormy seas.