Local pizza maker on ‘Pawn Stars’ on Thursday night
BY STEVE METSCH smetsch@southtownstar.com September 6, 2012 3:38PM
Updated: September 7, 2012 8:24AM
Joe Aurelio, owner of the popular pizza chain of the same name, will be featured on Thursday night’s episode of “Pawn Stars.”
The popular series, which tells the stories of people who bring items to a Las Vegas pawn shop and the colorful characters who work there, airs on The History Channel at 8:30 p.m. Thursdays.
Aurelio, 50, has collected baseball memorabilia for years. He was filmed as he tried to sell two 50-year-old molds used to make plastic figurines of Hall of Famers Joe DiMaggio and John McGraw back in 1963.
He dealt with Richard Harrison, fondly called “the old man” on the show, and his son, pawn shop owner Rick Harrison.
“It’s pretty intimidating. You’re not talking for fun. It’s a real negotiation. You see them on TV, but you really don’t know them, and there they are in your face,” Aurelio said.
Aurelio had brought the molds with him to Las Vegas for a pizza convention in March. He visited the pawn shop, caught the producer’s eye, and was asked to return.
Aurelio, of Orland Park, paid $400 for the molds and got $1,300 from the pawn shop.
Filming a TV show can be tedious, he said.
It took 2 1/2 hours to film his two-minute segment, he said. Lighting and sound had to be just right.
But the wheeling and dealing “are 100 percent real,” Aurelio said.
