One of the interesting parts of owning a business that is open to the public is the interactions with the crazy sides of the public. Like it says at the beginning of ‘Pawn Stars’: Everything in here has a story, and a price. One thing I’ve learned after 21 years – you never know what is gonna come through that door. Well, back in the mid ‘80s, this dude came through my door – constantly. Ugh!
His name was Martin, but I’ve forgotten his last name. Actually, it’s not that I’ve forgotten, it’s more like I don’t care enough to try and remember. Martin sold used cars for a living and worked at one of those ‘Buy Here, Pay Here’ lots. Every time I watch ‘True Lies’, I think of Martin. Martin could have been the character that Bill Paxton played. Just your typical, slimy, used-car salesman and shyster.
Why did he pick our store to be his jeweler of choice? I have no idea. But if I could figure out what I did wrong to bring that upon myself, I’d change it instantly.
If you were around in the mid ‘80s, you remember the telephones that we all had at work. They were these big clunky boxes that sat on a desk, and they all had a row of buttons that went across the top. The buttons were for however many ‘phone lines’ you had coming in. Does anyone remember hearing, “Chuck, you’ve got a call on line 2?”
Something that was unique to those phone systems was that most businesses assigned that very last button as ‘the back line’. That was the line you used when you needed to make a call, but didn’t want to tie up the store’s main line where a customer would get a busy signal. Who remembers busy signals? Anyway, back to Martin.
Martin, wearing his finest 2-year-old, 3-piece polyester suit, comes in, and asks if I could clean his solid gold diamond pinky ring. I said I could. He starts slobbering on his finger in order to get it off. Then he just held it out for me like I was supposed to just touch it. I pulled out a pair of tweezers and took it back and rinsed it and steamed it before I polished it. It was here I noticed it was a 2 carat CZ. I walked back out and had that conversation with him. He knew it was a fake, but said his clients at the car lot didn’t. Oh, did I tell you that Martin also wore one of those gaudy fake 18K Rolex Presidential watches, with the gold plating mostly worn off by now?
While Martin was waiting, he asked if he could borrow the phone. Since there were no cell phones back then, that was a pretty common request. I turned that big ole phone around on the desk, and pushed that last button so he could use ‘the back line’. When I was finished cleaning his ring, I walked out front, and Martin, with my phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder, gave me the old ‘hang on a minute, I’m on the phone’ signal.
I just set his ring on the desk and went back to work. A few minutes later, I saw the backline light go out on the phone and walked back out. By the time I got out there, he was already on another call. This became a trend several times a month. He’d swagger in, looking ridiculous, hand me his gross ring, and just sit down on the client side of the desk, turn the phone around, hit the back line button, and spend the next 30 minutes on the phone. Man, you’ve got to love retail. Then this happened.
One afternoon, I was standing in the showroom and noticed a taxi pull up out front. The taxi driver came in carrying a fake Rolex that had a broken band. And – is that blood?
I pull out a job envelope to write it up, and the driver tells me he’s just dropping it off for the guy that was still in his taxi. He doesn’t know the guy’s name, but said he needed to leave and get to the hospital. I walk up front and see a guy in the front passenger seat holding a bloody towel to his face. Yep, you guessed it, Martin!
Just like the movie ‘True Lies’, Martin was caught with a married woman at his apartment. The husband storms in and, well, let me put it like this. The phones that we had at our houses weren’t much smaller than the ones we had at work. The husband picked up Martin’s phone and proceeded to bash him in the face with it several times, coupled with a dozen or so left hooks to his rib cage.
After the fight, Martin called a taxi to take him to the hospital, but he needed the taxi to make a quick stop at the jewelry store on the way. He needed to have his fake Rolex repaired while he was in the emergency room.
A few hours later, a bruised and bandaged Martin shuffles in to pick up his prized fake Rolex. Martin told us about the husband using the phone on his face, and that he had a couple of bruised and broken ribs. Then he sat down at the client desk, turned the phone around, punched in the back line, and proceeded to make some phone calls. Unbelievable. But it doesn’t end there.
A couple of months later, with most of his wounds healed, Martin came in needing to have his jewelry appraised. Now mind you, everything he owned was a fake. Fake Rolex, fake diamond ring, fake rope chain, fake diamond stud, fake everything. He had some lame excuse as to why he needed it, but what the hell. I charge the same price to appraise a CZ as I do for a diamond. I did the appraisal and I think the 4 or 5 pieces added up to a retail value of about $950. Hell, I’ve appraised crappier pieces for people, so I didn’t give it another thought, until about 6 weeks later.
This very large, intimidating dude comes walking in asking for me. He introduced himself as an insurance investigator and wanted to talk to me about an appraisal I’d done recently, and hands me a copy of the appraisal I’d recently done for Martin. That was my letterhead. That was definitely my signature on the bottom of the document. But everything in the middle was forged.
Martin had changed his fake Rolex to a real Rolex. His 2 ct. CZ pinky ring became a 2 ct. VVS2, E-color diamond, and so on. I told the investigator to hang on a minute and let me find my copy. Sure enough, Martin only needed my appraisal for the letterhead and signature. He had taken the document to a copy center, and using a generous amount of white-out, he had erased everything in the middle. Martin suddenly owned around $50K worth of jewelry that he needed to insure. And sadly, within a month of taking out the policy, he had a break in at his apartment and suffered a total loss.
Martin got sentenced to prison for several years for insurance fraud over that stunt. Martin also never again came in, sat at my desk, turned my phone around, punched my back line button, and proceeded to make a dozen phone calls.
I don’t miss him!
