Pawn Stars: US Mexican War Promissory Note | History

What I got here is something that's probably worth over a million dollars that the federal government could be paying to you. RICK: OK? You sound like a salesman. Let's go ahead. GEORGE: It's a US-Mexican war promissory note with compounded interest over the last 160 years. The United States promises to pay Mr. D-- GEORGE: It's either Nuts or Huts. I haven't been able to figure it out. RICK: It looks like Nuts. I'm really hoping that's an H and not an N. GEORGE: The reason why I came into the pawn shop here today was to sell my US-Mexican war a promissory note from 1847. My dad had purchased an old colonial house and it was found in a cigar box. I'm looking at getting about $6,000. Half of it is going to go to a ring for my wife because she never had a diamond ring when we got married. And the other half's gonna go to me. RICK: It's really interesting. I mean, the neat thing is it's during the Mexican-American War. It's sort of sad-- this country-- most people don't even know that we went to war with Mexico. The entire West was owned by Mexico, but they really didn't occupy it. And we actually offered to buy it off them. They said, no. And then I'm sure the Mexican's said the American's shot. We said the Mexican's shot. Next thing you know, we ended up having a war break out. The Mexican-American War started over a dispute on what was the boundary between Texas and Mexico. And what a lot of people don't realize about this war-- it shaped the United States. So how much were you looking to get out of this? GEORGE: Well, if the-- if we go the interest route, let's split it in half. I'll take half. If it doesn't have the interest, how about 6 grand? RICK: I'm intrigued by this right here because I know that any bond issued by the US government, after we had a constitution, are still payable. You can present them to the government. They still have to pay you for them. When the interest ends, I don't know. Or if they actually are redeemable. Let me just call somebody up who will know. OK. RICK: OK? Let me get down here. He will look at this, and he can probably answer every question we got. And then he'll just go on for like another half hour about this stuff. This is a promissory note. I know about these. RICK: I mean, the neat thing is it's during the Mexican-American War. MARK HALL-PATTON: Well that's kind of understandable. One of the things about the Mexican-American War in American history is that we didn't have enough money in the treasury to fight the war. So we had to take out loans from our own people. We had borrow the money in order to fight the war. We didn't want to go to war. Polk didn't want to go to war. He was the president at that time. And there was a big controversy over whether the Nueces River or the Rio Grande was the southern border. So we went to war, and actually took Mexico. Now the treaty that Polk agreed to was they would give back Mexico to the Mexican government, but we would buy the Southwest for $15 million. So the war was a very important war in our history. See? I told you he'd just keep on talking. Is this a valid US note here? Let me take a closer look here. It says promises to pay one year after date to Mr. D Nuts. RICK: Sorry. MARK HALL-PATTON: So, order $500 with interest at the rate of 5 and 2/5 per centum. So they could have turned this in, and it would have been worth one year of interest. Right. RICK: Interest for one year. It doesn't accrue for infinity? MARK HALL-PATTON: No. They were smart enough to figure out, you know, if somebody sticks this in a box in the attic, and somebody finds it 170 years from now, we don't want to pay for it. OK. Is this note redeemable? MARK HALL-PATTON: No. And it's not an original. OK? MARK HALL-PATTON: This is a copy of the promissory note. You look at the writing here and the signatures-- the signatures were done by the same person who wrote this. And you would not see that if it was an original note because each of the signatories would have individually signed the note. Well it makes sense because, you know, if you're going to send off your paperwork, you need to make a copy of it. And back then, they didn't have-- you couldn't scan it and print it out. You know-- or if you use a copy machine, you-- if you made a copy, you wrote out a copy. And that's exactly what we've got here. - Thanks for busting my bubble. - Sorry about that. - Thank you. - Good to meet you. Thank you. - Pleasure. MARK HALL-PATTON: Even if it was an authentic promissory note from the Mexican War period, as I understand the law, you could not turn it in today. It is no longer valid. The final ones were called in in 1869. And then after that, they were invalidated. They were demonetized. Unfortunately, there's no historical significance here. If this was paperwork that was signed by a general that was doing something in the war-- if it was anything like that, it would be worth money. So I'd be willing to offer you basically nothing. Looks like Mama's not getting her diamond ring. Nope. Looks like no private jet, dude. All right. All right. RICK: Thanks for coming in, though. Thank you. I think I'm going to keep on researching this because even though it may not be worth something today, I'm sure I can find a buyer for it eventually.

Channel: Pawn Stars

Views: 943,063

Rating: 4.7614369 out of 5

Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, Pawn Stars, Pawn Stars clips, Pawn Stars full episodes, pawn, las vegas, gold & silver pawn shop, gold and silver, pawn shop, rick harrison, corey harrison, pawn stars cars, history channel pawn stars, Pawn Stars Season 12, Pawn Stars Season 12 episodes, Pawn Stars episode, pawn stars 2018, pawn stars 2018 episodes, pawn stars S12, pawn stars Season12 clips, pawn stars full season 12, Johnny Cash, Toy Trains

Id: SZfv4KLOYNs

Length: 5min 12sec (312 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 09 2018