Thread: American Pickers..

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How real can this show be? Let's see...two guys in a Sprinter type vehicle drive from Iowa to Florida/California/Texas/way far and buy low priced junk to resell for a few hundred measly profit....and they have a facility back in Iowa with a full time clerk. Hmmmm....they must stop at a lot of casinos and win. This business model stinks.....I can see a guy "picking" locally and keeping his expenses down....but it would be a boring TV show.

Now, the Auction TV shows......a couple of us from work have gone to two storage auctions. The first was at a storage facility near the local Air Force base.....maybe some good stuff. At least 100 people showed up. The two of us had more teeth than all of the others combined. The nine units all had CRAP.....household junk like old clothes, mattresses with lots of stains, junk knock down furniture, tube type TVs, etc. Some went for $500......wow. The second month, we went to another auction....same result except there were a lot of people in tank tops with saggy tattooed boobs....and they were guys!!! Same junk.....in all, we saw perhaps 25 units sold but zero had anything remotely worth carrying away if it were free. So much for finding the NOS 32 fenders, a Model 12 Winchester and stuff like that.....unless I rent a unit and put my own stuff in it.

mike in tucson

Mike, I've done two of those storage auction things so far and pretty much lost money on both, so my experience was like yours. I had to rent a truck both times to get all the stuff out of the units, it was hard work in 95 degree heat, and what I ended up doing was cleaning out a storage unit for someone else. Those visions of finding priceless antiques and expensive guns might happen, but I bet you have to buy a lot of units before you score one.

Goodwill Industries was the real winner the second time, I just backed up the truck and gave 99% of it to them.

Don

Originally Posted by robot

How real can this show be? Let's see...two guys in a Sprinter type vehicle drive from Iowa to Florida/California/Texas/way far and buy low priced junk to resell for a few hundred measly profit....and they have a facility back in Iowa with a full time clerk. Hmmmm....they must stop at a lot of casinos and win. This business model stinks.....I can see a guy "picking" locally and keeping his expenses down....but it would be a boring TV show.

Now, the Auction TV shows......a couple of us from work have gone to two storage auctions. The first was at a storage facility near the local Air Force base.....maybe some good stuff. At least 100 people showed up. The two of us had more teeth than all of the others combined. The nine units all had CRAP.....household junk like old clothes, mattresses with lots of stains, junk knock down furniture, tube type TVs, etc. Some went for $500......wow. The second month, we went to another auction....same result except there were a lot of people in tank tops with saggy tattooed boobs....and they were guys!!! Same junk.....in all, we saw perhaps 25 units sold but zero had anything remotely worth carrying away if it were free. So much for finding the NOS 32 fenders, a Model 12 Winchester and stuff like that.....unless I rent a unit and put my own stuff in it.

mike in tucson

Guys,
Let me help you out here. A couple of weeks ago we went to LeClaire, IA just to see Pickers. Trust me, my garage is bigger. The stuff you see is shot with a very narrow camera lens, just like on a Hollywood set. The Nash sits about 40' from the front of the store and the parking lot is between it and the building. There's probably room for 5 or 6 cars to park in their lot. The building is down an alleyway and the inventory leaves a lot to be desired. There are no deals and the sales (they were making) were for coffee cups, tee shirts and caps with the "Picker's" logo. Lots of people though and most of them were disappointed. I heard a lot of groans and some were very boisterous. I thought it was histerical. It's a freaking TV show for goodness sake and like all TV shows, the more BS the better it sells. Picker's, Pawn Stars, Storage Wars, etal are a lot of fun to watch but just remember, they're entertainment. How many shows would you watch if they conducted their business like all other businesses? Think about it, in Picker's case, you'd probably see one person nosing around an estate sale at 7:00 AM and ultimately buying a rocking chair for $4.00. Then they'd take it back to their shop, put a $25.00 price tag on it and it would sit for a couple of months. Are we talking ratings here?

I've gone to a couple of storage auctions and the one unit I kick myself for passing up was a 10 x 20 that was jammed full of Edsel parts. The guy must have either been a serious collector or in the business. There was everything from complete dashboards, to engines, to doors, hoods, seats, boxes of misc parts, and in one corner a standing stack of chrome side trim that must have been 3 feet around.

It didn't go for a lot, maybe $ 700 if I recall, but I just kept telling myself I was going to have to move all that stuff and where was I going to put it. But in hindsight I should have bought it, done research on what fit what, and sold each individual piece on Ebay. I could have made some good money, I bet.

But it was 95 degrees out and it looked like more work than I wanted to get into.

Don