American Pickers is a joke. The prices they pay for rusted junk is unreal. And then they show at the end: Bought for $100, Sold for $125, Profit - $25. BULL! What about their gas, store rent, advertising, motel bills (although the two of them probably share one bed), etc. etc. If I bought everything for 100 and sold it for only 125 I would be out of business in no time. Watch Pawn Stars if you want to see a properly run business.
American Pickers and Pawn Stars are both fake. Fun to watch but totaly scripted.
You don’t just walk into a pawn shop and not notice the cameras, light reflectors, sound equipment and drop your Nordon Bombsight on the counter. The natural reaction is to look at the camera and say “Am I on TV?”.
Knowing two people who have gone to the store - they say there is a rope line to even get in, you won’t see the Pawn Stars guys in the store unless they are filming, and when they are filming the store is shut down. A good portion of the store is taken up with Pawn Star souvenirs like Chumlee t-shirts - something you wont see on the TV camera angles. And museum currators don’t just show up at Pawn Shops to check if an item is real. They would never have the time to work at the museum. And many of the items so I’ve read are actually from the area museums used only as props for the show. They go back after the filming and phony sale. Fun show anyway
I agree. American Pickers never made sense to me either. The show has to be heavily edited. Their biggest find was getting selected for the show.
The same WTF goes for Trick My _____. I watched a show recently where the glass was replaced in the doors. But the rust on the inside of the doors was ignored. None of the drive train was replaced. Want to really thrill the owner of the truck? Replace/rebuild the engine, clutch, transmission and tandems. Otherwise, you’re just putting lipstick on the pig.
I’ll start off by saying I don’t know diddly squat about their business or collectibles in general. Firstly, the History Channel is undoubtedly paying them money. Maybe that’s where they make the profit. But even without the channel paying them, if they were losing tons of money, there’s no way their business could survive for any length of time unless they were both multi-millionaires before they started the buiness.
You left out the profit they make from their show salaries.