Col. G. B. Pears (as he is referenced in Geoffrey Haines' records) was born in the British colony at Pera in Istanbul, the third son and sixth child of Sir Edwin Pears and Mary Hall. His father, Edwin, wrote several books on the history of the Ottoman Empire, and documented the atrocities during the Bulgarian April Uprising in 1876, for which he was knighted when the family returned from Istanbul in 1909. That same year, Guy Pears married Marjorie Frances Eleanor McLeod in Eastbourne, and thereafter seems to have remained in the UK, though his parents certainly returned to Istanbul.

He joined the Royal Engineers as a Captain and eventually became a Lieutenant Colonel. He served in the First World War and was injured (gunshot wound in the thigh), but continued to serve after the War. Despite this, he became a member of the Royal Numismatic Society in 1915, in the midst of the War.

Though all of the Barber's Plevna Hoard coins were acquired by Geoffrey Haines through the British Museum, there is a note in the Numismatic Chronicle of 1923 that 'Mr. Harold Mattingly exhibited for Lt.-Col. G. B. Pears, R. E., a series of antoniniani of Trajan Decius from a recent find near Plevna.' Given Pears's father's association with Bulgaria, it could be that he was very involved with the hoard, though he is not mentioned in Mattingly and Salisbury's 1924 article on the hoard.

Guy Pears died at his home in Empingham, near Oakham, Rutland, on 21st November 1965. Geoffrey Haines claims that he bought his 25 ex Col. G. B. Pears collection coins through A. H. Baldwin in 1965, so it was either a very fast sale, or Pears had given his collection to be sold just before his death.

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