Greenfield business owner, vendor appear on ‘Pawn Stars Do America’

Skye Wellington with her copper boiling pot, which she attempted to sell on the reality TV show “Pawn Stars Do America,” at Innovintage Place on Hope Street in Greenfield.

Skye Wellington with her copper boiling pot, which she attempted to sell on the reality TV show “Pawn Stars Do America,” at Innovintage Place on Hope Street in Greenfield. STAFF PHOTO/PAUL FRANZ

Skye Wellington with her copper boiling pot, which she attempted to sell on the reality TV show “Pawn Stars Do America,” at Innovintage Place on Hope Street in Greenfield.

Skye Wellington with her copper boiling pot, which she attempted to sell on the reality TV show “Pawn Stars Do America,” at Innovintage Place on Hope Street in Greenfield. STAFF PHOTOS/PAUL FRANZ

A name plate mentions Faneuil Hall and Boston on the copper boiling pot at Innovintage Place on Hope Street in Greenfield.

A name plate mentions Faneuil Hall and Boston on the copper boiling pot at Innovintage Place on Hope Street in Greenfield. STAFF PHOTO/PAUL FRANZ

Ed Bourbeau and Skye Wellington in a vendors booth at Innovintage Place on Hope Street in Greenfield.

Ed Bourbeau and Skye Wellington in a vendors booth at Innovintage Place on Hope Street in Greenfield. STAFF PHOTO/PAUL FRANZ

Vendor Ed Bourbeau with his Whimsical Woods products at Innovintage Place on Hope Street in Greenfield. Bourbeau sold a set of bagpipes for $800 on the reality TV show “Pawn Stars Do America.”

Vendor Ed Bourbeau with his Whimsical Woods products at Innovintage Place on Hope Street in Greenfield. Bourbeau sold a set of bagpipes for $800 on the reality TV show “Pawn Stars Do America.”

By DOMENIC POLI

Staff Writer

Published: 11-22-2023 1:53 PM

GREENFIELD — If you watched last week’s episode of the reality TV show “Pawn Stars Do America,” you may have recognized a Greenfield business owner.

Skye Wellington, who opened Innovintage Place five years ago, traveled to The Endicott Estate in Dedham on July 24 and appears for a minute and a half on the episode “Beantown Bargains,” which first aired on History — formerly The History Channel — on Nov. 15. She declined a $100 offer for a copper boiling pot she says is from the Victorian era.

“It’s a boiler pot and this is something that would have been used in big kitchens. They used to use these on railroad tracks, too, so the men who were working could get water, either hot or cold,” she said of the item now on indefinite display in her shop at 76 Hope St. “It was used a lot for a hundred-and-something years, and it’s a miracle that it didn’t become bullets.”

In the episode, Wellington presents the pot to pawnbroker Corey Harrison, whose father and grandfather opened the famed Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas in 1989. Harrison, his father Rick and longtime friend Austin “Chumlee” Russell are stars of the TV show “Pawn Stars,” which debuted in 2009 and chronicles the often unconventional customers and items that come into the shop. “Pawn Stars Do America” is a series spin-off that features the three hitting the road on a quest for things to buy.

Wellington tells the younger Harrison the pot, or possibly tea urn, was manufactured by Hopkinson & Holden at Faneuil Hall, which for nearly 200 years was also the home to Durgin-Park — a restaurant that likely would have had such an item.

But Harrison said the pot is “an art project.” He insisted the spigot was soldered on “way after the fact this was created” and said the top looks like “some kind of milk jug apparatus that was put onto the bucket.” Wellington asked for $500 and Harrison countered with $100, which she rejected.

However, Wellington had better luck when Ed Bourbeau — who maintains a booth at Innovintage Place to sell his Whimsical Woods products — sold a set of bagpipes to Russell for $800. He had asked for $2,222 and was told by Wellington, who got the pipes at an auction in Orange, not to accept less than $400.

“I thought it was great,” Bourbeau said. “It was just a real fun time down there.”

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Wellington recalled that a casting director reached out to her in April via Instagram and asked if she had anything Boston-related to bring to the upcoming taping. She said she bought the copper boiling pot from a friend who got it from a dealer in Sturbridge.

“I bought it from her and it was sitting, collecting dust, and then ‘Pawn Stars’ called. I had some other things that I could have shown them, but that was the one that was specifically from Boston, and probably one of the most significant places in Boston, which is Faneuil Hall,” she said. “What I love about it is I’m a huge Julian Fellowes/‘Downton Abbey’ fan … and I like to think [that] something like this would have been used in an era of one of those TV shows that I love.”

Like Bourbeau, Wellington said being on the show was a great experience.

“They were really, really welcoming when we got there, and we were VIPs. So when we got there they put us in a special area. Ed and I got to walk around and be extras in the show as well,” she said. “They fed us. They were really nice.”

Wellington also said more goes into the show than one might think.

“It’s not scripted, but it is staged,” she said. “They have a set director that does it all up with vintage in the background and that sort of thing. So it looked cool. We did our take probably, like, 10 times, at least. So I had to keep walking in with the pot, putting the pot down. They were getting different angles, we were having different conversations. Corey and I were joking about putting vodka in it, and they had to cut that out of the scene.”

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.