Austin Lee Russell (born September 8, 1982), better known by his stage name "Chumlee," is a reality television personality, best known for his appearances on the History Channel television show Pawn Stars - which depicts day-to-day business at the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas where he works. Chumlee went to work at the pawn shop five years before filming the first season, having been a childhood friend of Corey Harrison whose father and grandfather founded the shop.
Chumlee is often portrayed on the show as the comic foil, but he often appraises items in his areas of expertise, including pinball machines, and sneakers.
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Back in elementary school, when he was about 12-years-old, he was given the nickname "Chumlee" due to his large face and chin, which prompted the father of one of his friends to remark that he looked like Chumley, the walrus, from the animated TV series Tennessee Tuxedo. In addition to this, his nickname sounds similar to "Chun-Li", the first female character, from Capcom's "Street Fighter" series, who made her debut in Street Fighter II: The World Warrior for the Sega Mega Genesis and Super Nintendo Entertainment System. As a result of this, multiple artists on deviantART have drawn Chumlee cosplaying as Chun-Li, or having the two of them interact with each other.
Chumlee has an extremely lucrative hobby in collecting Pokémon cards, but he likes to keep the risk of his personal Pokémon purchases to a minimum, since he just can't invest his money like that, and doesn't have that kind of money to be spending it on a $10,000 card. Due to the risk of losing money on high-priced Pokémon cards, he just chooses not to spend his money on cards that are so expensive, because he cannot afford to spend that kind of money like that.
He's not too comfortable with fame, despite being the fan favorite. Chumlee admitted he's not great at interacting with "Pawn Stars" fans, "I'm honestly probably the least approachable out of all of us in reality, I don't do well in conversation...I'm just very quiet and reserved for the most part. I've opened up a lot since the show premiered, but Corey and Rick, they talk a lot more than I do."
In the anime series "Little Witch Academia", a shop keeper known as Café Proprietor, the owner of the Last Wednesday Society — aka the Magic Item Café, bears a striking resemblance to Chumlee and even has similar arm tattoos. His design is 100% intentional because the producers intended the character to be a homage to Chumlee and even got Akihiro Matsushima, the guy who dubs over Chumlee's voice in the Japanese dub of Pawn Stars, to voice Café Proprietor in this series. For the English dubbed version, Chumlee says he would have voiced the character if the producers had asked him and he wishes they would have hired him to do the voice, because he would have done it for really cheap.
In 2017, Chumlee opened a candy shop called Chumlee's Candy On The Boulevard, it is located across the street from the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop. The candy store is managed by Chumlee's brother, Sage Russell.