If you ever find yourself at the McKinley Presidential Library & Museum in Canton and spot a glittery tiara behind glass, don’t just walk past it thinking “oh, fancy hat stuff, moving on.” That tiara has stories—including a reality TV cameo, a Las Vegas pawn shop, and one very determined group of Ohio museum folks on a mission.
The tiara once belonged to First Lady Ida McKinley, wife of President William McKinley (our 25th prez, and a big Canton guy). It’s a delicate gold halo topped with two diamond-studded wings—equal parts angelic and wildly extra. Over the years, it passed down through Ida’s relatives, who occasionally lent it to the museum. Then, in 2014, it randomly popped up… on Pawn Stars.
Yes. Pawn Stars.
Turns out a family member sold it to Gold & Silver Pawn in Vegas, where it landed in the hands of reality show regular Rick Harrison. When staff at the McKinley Museum saw it on TV, they did what any self-respecting Ohio history lovers would do: they picked up the phone.
Harrison agreed to sell it back—if the museum could raise the $43,000 he paid for it.
So they launched a campaign, and hundreds of donations came in from across the country (you know people love a happy ending). The tiara made its way home, where it now lives on permanent display in its original velvet jewelry box, looking extremely regal and extremely Ohio.
But there’s one more twist.
Rick Harrison, who lived with seizures as a kid and served on the board of the Epilepsy Foundation, donated the money from the sale to epilepsy research in honor of Ida McKinley—who quietly lived with epilepsy throughout her life in the White House. “As a kid, I looked for people whose names I might recognize who had epilepsy,” he said. “She was one of those rare names I found.”
So yeah, this isn’t just a sparkly museum piece. It’s a weird, wonderful, full-circle story that connects a 19th-century First Lady to a 21st-century pawn broker—and reminds us all that sometimes, lost things do find their way home.
