Kactus

Did anyone see the Bianchi on American Pickers last night (1/20/16)? It appeared to be a mid-60's Specialissima with Campy Record RD, Universal Mod. 61 center pull brakes and Cinelli Unicanitor saddle. It appeared to be good condition and original and bought it for $750.

3speedslow

No, I missed that! New puppy in the house kinda busy.

They used to go after a lot of bikes when the show was new but tapered off later.

CroMo Mike 

On some shows they just walk right past the vintage bicycles, cars and motorcycles and go right to drooling over old signs, toys, and oil cans. Other shows they bird-dog on the vintage car, motorcycle, or bike. No explaining it.

CV-6 

Who wants to send Mike the mp3 that pronounces Italian cycling names? He butchered Cinelli and Campagnolo. Bike was pretty cool. I think if he was planning to sell at the shop, he overpaid. But JMO.

Kactus

I noticed that "sin-nelly". He valued resale at $1100, so if he does re-sell it he won't be doing much work on it before hand.

wrk101

It helps having a paid weekly infomercial for their business. I have no doubt that people will pay extra just to say they bought it from American Pickers.

Kactus

If he sells it for $1100, that doesn't seem ridiculous to me if it is what it looked like.

degan

This show, just like Pawn Stars, Storage Wars, etc. is completely fake. Sorry to burst any bubbles, but whatever they end up buying was probably staged.

CV-6 

I know that. All the transactions are worked out in advance. One person told me he saw the van on a flatbed going down the road while another told me he has seen them in airports. Doesn't change what he paid for it.

degan

Not only are the deals worked out in advance, but many of the items themselves are brought in by the production company, placed in whatever old shed they're looking through, and then "found" by the pickers. I haven't seen the episode in question but I'd bet the bike(s) were never owned by the person they "bought" them from.

thinktubes 

Wait - is Santa Claus still a thing?

degan

As much a thing as the Pickers or jesus.

Kactus

You mean "reality TV" isn't real?

CV-6 

I thought the "find" humorous. Here is a guy who says he lusted for this bike and says he is a bike nut (although more to the turn of the century) and he can't pronounce two of the biggest names in Italian components correctly. Maybe that supports your comment. Mikey was reading script and has no real idea what he has in his hands? Could be. For something sitting in the barn, it did seem remarkably clean.

okane

all the other reality sludge being trowled out to us.

I had not watched the show in about a year and happened to channel surf past it while the bike in question was being discussed. Stopped for a moment to watch the phony buy and decided nothing had changed in the past 12 months except the short guy seemed to have gained 50 pounds and their mother back at the shop seemed to have more tats.

Some of us on the forum may remember the promise of cable tv...for a small fee we would get hundreds of commercial free shows, concerts, movies, etc. Now all we get is reality show tripe, ufo hunters, pawn shop weirdos, ghost hunters, gold hunters, and insurance company advertisements.

To make matters worse, they are repeated hundreds of times. Unfortunately I have some physical ailments that make me more sedentary that I would like and while I read alot and ride whenever I can, I'm often stuck sitting in a chair and would like watch something entertaining. I guess I just expected more from the history channel than seeing 2 guys pretending to roam the country pretending to buy stuff. I find the posts on Craigs List are more entertaining.

Maybe that's why I spend so much time reading the posts on this site....they're entertaining and I usually learn something.

Rant over

bikemig 

It's clear that a lot of people trying to sell bikes on craigslist have spent way too much time watching American pickers; they're pretty clueless about the value of old stuff much of which is just junk.

fender1

I quit cable and have an antenna for local channels (news, sports etc.) and a Netflix subscription. No reality TV and its a lot cheaper.

okane

Believe me I've thought long and hard about that but my better half wouldn't go for it.....plus other than local news and sports, instead of reality shows, network tv has little more than unfunny sitcoms where every statement is followed by10 seconds of canned laughter and network news that's about as truthful as the nose pickers.

And cable does occasionally have some good uncut "free" movies (not showtime or hbo) and shows (I happen to enjoy how its made). A while back I watched a documentary on federal agent Donnie Brasco and was amazed by how closely the movie portrayed real life.

rootboy 

Heh. Don't get me started. I was climbing poles and installing cable back before Ted Turner became "cool". I still have my "I want my MTV" T shirt we gave out to the first subscribers. And remember when we first launched HBO. Remember when The Discovery Channel, National Geo and The History Channel were actually about science and history?! Now it's all crap to appeal the lowest common denominator and prurient voyeurism. I got over-saturated. And that's one reason I killed my TV 15 years ago.

Cptimagine

You're all over that, years ago, a couple in central Pa. set about hoarding things . Then slowly began selling "value guides" for the stuff they had a ton of .

Kill your TV .

okane

My wife worked for the local cable company when it all began and I remember exactly what you are saying! It reminds me of a song with the line, "....we pave paradise and put up a parking lot."

embankmentlb

No TV here. How does anyone sit through those commercials?

bmthom.gis

By DVRing the shows we like and fast forwarding through them

embankmentlb

After fast forwarding through the stuff between the commercials we are left with nothing...

eschlwc

tcm, hbo and showtime are commercial free.

you can dvr anything else.

or use cable's 'on demand.'

on saturday's, i like having three games on at once: one on the tv, one on the laptop, and one on the phone.

or a tcm flick on the laptop while watching the game on tv.

and you can cast anything to tv from the xfinity app (on the phone or laptop) with chromecast.

the watch-espn app is a gift from heaven to us college sports fans (with cable).