I have receive some very reliable information on American Pickers photo shoot of a site. The Pickers has a techincal team of 18 people on the site besides Mike and Frank. They get hundreds of pictures before the shoot of the items that the person has for sale. they pick out items and pre-negoiate the price before the shoot, so they have a good idea what will be at the show.
Mike is very friendily and will do photos and autographs. Frank is feisty, sometimes he will sign and do photographs and then other times he will not. Another thing on the show you will see Mike and Frank put items on the van. What you do not know they have a tractor trailer with them where the items are put on. They are not driving van anymore as they have other transportation.
I hope this information does not dishearten you about the show. The show potrays the life of the pickers. You are out on the road going to flea markets and to houses looking for items you can resale to make a profit. It is what I and others have done as it is world we love .
Wow! It doesn’t dishearten me, but does amaze me that there is a technical staff of 18, rather than just the 1 camera man that I envisioned. But I believe every word you’ve written because when you think about it, what you’ve described has to be how it works. Any of the “reality” shows has to actually be quite artificial to get transformed to an entertaining TV production. Thanks for the info.
Don
I am glad it will not dishearten you as it is fun show to watch. There are oother show I would not waste a minute on.
Back in the pre-internet days I made some of my best purchases from pickers I established a relationship with. Generally they would build a network of buyers in certain fields- glassware, or doorstops, etc.- and there weren’t many people asking them for Marx playsets, so I had a few guys that would call once in a while if they found something. Best buy? I got 5 minty playsets- Richard Greene, Zorro, 1956 Battleground, and 2 others I can’t recall, for $500. ( I sent that find in to PFPC’s “Grapevine” way back when- I have to dig out the issue and find out what the other 2 were!) The picker had bought them at Brimfield for $200.That was over 20 years ago; there were no camera crews around. Now I’m sure that if the fellow found 5 playsets like that they’d end up on Ebay.
Sean
Ebay changed the relation between pickers and buyers. Once the pickers found out about Ebay they went directly to Ebay forgetting the people who helped them. The buyers have to work harder in looking for items.
That leaves us with e-bay, has e-bay helped or hurt the hobby? I think probably both if that is possible. It helped due to the fact people that may not have otherwise had the opportunity to get involved due to things like lack of shows in the area. The dealers were then able to get higher prices for their sets. It hurt because it drove the prices up so the average guy couldn’t afford the quality sets, so only a few were able to monopolize the best stuff. Sort of a microchasm of the world, those with money were able to make more, those with insufficient funding and those who didn’t get involved on the ground floor had to scrape.
When Ebay first came out dealers looked at Ebay as additional sales tool, which you put our business up more as it reached people around the world. What happen was while did give us more customers, we found that our old avenues wither and die. We found more competition, our sources started to sell on their own. The result was most of us were at square one or worse.
While some items get high prices, other items have dropped in price.