Best I Can Do Is

About

Best I Can Do Is is a phrase often said by Rick Harrison on the TV show Pawn Stars. After a customer brings in their item and talks a bit about it, Rick will often call in an expert who gives more info and a possible price point on the object the person is attempting to sell. At that point is when Rick will say the phrase before giving an offer that many consider low-balling the customer. The phrase itself became used in many memes as a phrasal template and exploitable all over the internet during the 2010s and beyond.

Origin

In the Pawn Stars show, Rick Harrison frequently uses the line "best I can do is X" over the course of multiple seasons (example compilation shown below). Memes referencing his iconic catchphrase directly pull from this often-repeated phrase on Pawn Stars, usually changing the amount at the end to something comedic.

Though the original example can't be found anymore, the origin of the meme dates back to around the middle of 2010 when it was used in an Advice Animals format. During this time, an image of Rick Harrison would have top text describing an expensive-sounding item, and then the bottom text would have a laughably low price that he would be willing to buy the item at. When Advice Animals fell out of fashion, Rick Harrison memes split in two, with his comedically low offers for items becoming "Best I Can Do Is" in early 2012. The earliest archived example of this meme was uploaded to Know Your Meme^[1] by the user Brad, who uploaded an image depicting Rick offering .50 cents for a dollar (shown below).

Spread

Though the first recorded instance of the meme is unavailable with only a post record remaining on Reddit, it was uploaded by Redditor /u/Kilser, who posted it to the /r/memes^[2] subreddit on April 8th, 2012, only receiving five upvotes at a 70 percent rate before the thread was archived.

A more recent example of the meme was found on the /r/dankmemes^[3] subreddit, posted by Redditor OverIntention on August 9th, 2019, receiving 30,000 upvotes in six months (shown below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References