Posted: July 10, 2010
Detroit pawnshop gets TV series
Family to star in new reality show

BY KATHERINE YUNG
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

Get ready for the pawnshop wars.

Starting Aug.16, Detroit's own Les Gold and his family, the owners of American Jewelry and Loan on the city's northwest side, will be the stars of a new reality show on TruTV called "Hardcore Pawn." It will compete on Monday nights with "Pawn Stars," the hit History Channel show featuring the Harrison family of Las Vegas and its Gold & Silver Pawn Shop.

Four months of filming for the new eight-episode series wrapped up this week. "The show is about a real pawnshop in a real city," Gold said. "There is nothing made up."

TruTV ran two pilot episodes of "Hardcore Pawn" in December. They proved so successful that the Turner Broadcasting System channel gave the green light to produce a series.

Like "Pawn Stars," "Hardcore Pawn" will focus on Gold's family -- his wife, Lili, and adult children Seth Gold and Ashley Broad. But the customers that frequent his store are likely to be every bit as entertaining.

The series "shows Detroit as it actually is," Gold said.


Pawnshop family set for its close-up

If "Hardcore Pawn" becomes a hit when it debuts Aug. 16 on TruTV, tourists and others could soon be flocking to American Jewelry and Loan's 50,000-square-foot facility on Greenfield Road in Detroit.

After all, there's a precedent for this kind of marketing bonanza. Tourists regularly descend on the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas that's featured on the popular History Channel show "Pawn Stars," buying up hundreds of T-shirts and hats.

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Contact KATHERINE YUNG: 313-222-8763 or kyung@freepress.com
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