Now you’ve burst my bubble: PICKERS is the only one of those shows with anything to recommend it, but lately, it too looks so staged and contrived its appeal is fading fast. ALL of these shows started out, the way everything does, with some semblance of “purity”, then, over time, the formula is deemed to need a little tweaking, and things get staged, contrived, and tiresomely predictable, as in the fake wrangling over price that is a feature of every PAWN STARS transaction.
Rick Harrison willingly goes through this same process EVERY time, and interesting, like American Pickers, you virtually NEVER see him sell anything, only buy stuff. The PICKERS guys, the same thing, like the STORAGE WARS winning bidders:
they always tote up their expenditures, and assure the viewer that they WILL make 20%,50% or double their money when they resell the stuff, which you NEVER see them do.
Back in the early 1970's my uncle had a Flea Market/antique store. The way he found most of his purchases was either by driving back areas or by cleaning out basements in older parts of town.
American Pickers seem to be buying for collectors on their clients or customers list. You also have to buy what is selling. Back when my uncle had his place old wood spoke wagon wheels were high demand. A few craftsmen he knew and sold too would turn them in to glass top coffee tables. He used Horse Hanes for the legs which my uncle also watched for. My uncle also collected old pre-prohibition bottles. We would go into the old part of town and dig out the filled up cisterns. It's dangerous to do and you don't have but maybe a 6-8 hour work window before the walls become unstable. When utility water came people threw their trash {also meaning bottles} in the cistern to fill it up.
The selling aspect you question about walk in customers Really not a good idea to do that. There would be some liability issues. Hey everybody guess who just bought.... On the under hand Pawn Stars there shop is secure much more so than a buyers home plus there would be trying to get legal releases to film them etc. Obviously they do sell a considerable amount of merchandise and were doing so before their shows.
The pickers were hired by Captain Kirk to buy the right kinds of stuff for one of the rooms in his house. His wife and he both love horses and the room was done in antiques and they had a interior decorator set the room up. It was quite interesting as they said it was the first celebrity they had ever picked for....they both seems like really nice people. The decorator used much of their own horse stuff, but the main articles the pickers found.....Personally I’d love a job like that....its garage sales on a grand scale..