Savagewolf

A friend of mine who goes to Vegas frequently said that the pawn shop is very unimpressive. The shop mainly just sells t-shirts and other trinkets promoting their show.

marley mission

i actually love reality tv - big 'survivor' fan
all good points being made
i think you just have to take it for what is - entertainment

honey boo boo?....anyone...?

frantik

strangely, Survivor and some of the other competition reality shows sound more "real" than these shows where they misrepresent actors as the owner of a product.

treebound 

This has been on my mind over-night, got me to thinking about some things that I might check into, dangerous....

Aside from that, how about a reality show about bike collectors and flippers. We could strap an action camera onto the BoxOfCrap and follow it around the country with episodes taking place at each transfer point. Side stories leading into The-41 and other sub-sections as interests and annoyances intertwine.

Anyway, back to my thoughts which are now day-dreams since the work day has started.

lotek 

American Pickers and Pawn Stars are fake?

I'm shocked I tell you, shocked.

cobrabyte

oddjob2

Only in South Joisey, what a haul of vintage motorcycle parts! Read it here.

IthaDan 

He wasn't totally making it up, Here's the auction he was talking about:
https://boingboing.net/2010/02/10/old...o-nes-sys.html

This might be the biggest lesson of all- a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It's been happening in the collector car world since the barrett jackson auction started being regularly televised. If some yokel sees a [pristine, numbers matching, low mileage... but nevermind all that] muscle car pulling in 6 figures, then the rustbucket sitting under a tarp in his yard since the Carter administration must surely be worth $10k!

bigbossman 

Shows how much you know....... I got $15 for mine.

frantik

^ u got $15 for a non-working NES?

bigbossman 

Well...... to be honest, I'm not sure if it was working or not. I never plugged it in, and so advertised it as such. Full disclosure is that I sold it on eBay, so I got $15 minus the fees.

So..... I guess not.

frantik

oh, ebay..

mkeller234

I've not completely familiar with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, but i've watched some of his interviews and lectures. He's definitely good at speaking and keeping abstract concepts semi-understandable and very interesting. He's really funny when paired up with Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart. Embarrassingly enough, the Daily Show is actually how I came to know of him. There is an long interview with Stephen Colbert and Neil DeGrasse Tyson on youtube. It's as interesting as it is entertaining. I really like Stephen Colbert and loved Strangers with Candy.

Dan Burkhart 

I was just watching a Pawn Stars episode and watched a guy wheel in a 1952 Schwinn Twinn in showroom condition. honestly, it looked brand new. Lovely shade of green and everything.
The guy wanted $300 for it which I didn't think was too far out of line, but Chumley was minding the store and he figured it was only worth $40.
I'm betting there are members here that would have given him his $300.

w1gfh

I think the worst part of these reality shows is that the general public now thinks a guy offering $50 for their junky bike is going to turn around and sell it for $500.

And don't even get me started on the "ghost" reality shows.

531Aussie

Is there a way to find out what happens to the stuff? I just saw the episode where they buy the Excelsior motorbike and the Curtis motor.
Did they get restored and sold? Just curious

Darth Lefty 

What "American Pickers" does well is that it treats the collectors / hoarders with some respect and dignity. They get to tell their story on camera and they don't get mocked, and it's not usually the extraction of some family heirloom from its family. The storage auction shows make me so sad, they are often going through a whole suburban house's furnishings. What happened to that family? They couldn't make the mortgage and then they couldn't even make the storage rent. Homeless? Divorced?

cb400bill

I suggest to call them and inquire if they are still available.

563.265.3939 Ask for Danielle

https://antiquearchaeology.com/antique_archaeology.html

531Aussie

Really? THanks

geoluv

The value of vintage bikes varies wildly from market to market. I've worked in few vintage bike shops in NYC, which is the highest market in North America you can sell vintage bikes in.
I have lots of respect for American Pickers because that dude Mike got his start with a few bike shops, sold new and used, probably got the vintage bike bug first, then he moved on to motorcycles, then on to anything antique. Make no mistake about it, mike was making a living picking long before he owned an antique store or had a show, so he's legit as they come, but I can't watch his tv show cause the math don't add up like everyone is saying. You can't just drive around America picking stuff at random (as they depict) gas will bankrupt you in a heartbeat. You have to snipe your picks before you get in the car via the Internet or word of mouth.


This is how my picks usually go... I'm an employee of a vintage bike store, I'm the mechanic the owner trusts to appraise bikes on the spot, hold 2,500 to 5,000 in cash, but mostly I'm the guy he trusts to not wreck his truck. I leave the NYC area around 9. I get to the bumblef#ck picking spot in Pennsyltucky three hours later. I've arrived at a barn that a dude is renting where he stores a hundred or so vintage bicycles and a few newer used ones. He's a white haired retired good ol boy who ran his family's bike shop back in the day so he knows bikes. He scours Craig's list and eBay multiple times per day and word of mouth and has a wide circle of friends in the area cause he's lived there his entire life. He picks up anything he can sell to me that's within 45 min drive, sometimes more for multiple bikes. He has the dump and recycling dudes give him a heads up when something potentially valuable shows up at the dump. When people in my store ask me "where do you get your bikes" I tell them it is a very grass roots effort on the part of theses "bike brokers" as I call them. He sells to me, other shops in NYC, other shops in Philly, and any random person that shows up because he's advertising on CL too. I pick out 15 to 40 bikes I like, haggle a little but not much, we both know what's worth what, I hand him a huge stinky wad of bills, then I proceed to remove the pedals and turn the bars sideways in the 90 degree heat with high humidity for a good 45 min. I stuff all the bikes in the truck then start the trek back to NYC. At this point I usually treat myself to a few pulls of the citys finest sour weasel on my custom glass one hitter that looks like a cig to make my back hurt less and to distract myself from the fact that I now smell like king kings sweaty dick. "Your not going to smoke weed in my truck are you?" Not for what your paying me. I do this twice a week during the summer. The hardest part of picking from bike brokers is that they try to slip you stuff that's kinda junked up and that needs a lot of work, we want stuff that's in good shape and will be easy to flip fast. The other hard part is they keep all the high dollar Italian and Japanese stuff for themselves and sell it on eBay. As his biggest customer we try to leverage our buying power to force him to give us a few good ones every trip. Last batch not looking so crispy? Not enough good stuff? Not enough nice road bikes? We tell him flat out we need better stuff next time, next time comes and things aren't to our liking? Maybe we starve him for two weeks, don't come back until he tells us he's got a few nice road bikes in the batch. Other shops buy from him but not in the bulk we do, when we don't buy he feels it. Also we buy everything, low end, high end, smaller shops are much more picky and they aren't hitting the high dollar market we are so they try to haggle him down more than we do.
I also personally keep my eye on the jersey CL to find stuff to flip for myself after hours (or on my lunch break around the corner . I pick up anything within a 45 min drive that I can flip for at least double my investment. I usually pick black and red raliegh and Schwinn three speeds, there are a lot of them to pick and they can be sold for double in NYC and Brooklyn but they aren't worth enough for the owners to sell them on eBay. I usually only buy all original stuff, its got to be good for me to show up. I spend an hour detailing and tuning the bike then take really good pics and throw them up on CL and repost until sold. Problem is that damn citibike program totally kicked the cruiser bike CL market in the balls. Prices are down 20 to 30 percent. Everyone is selling their bikes and getting a citibike membership and people that would have bought this kind of bike are instead getting citibike memberships. Well see if the market rebounds next year when people realize the citibikes make you look like a slack jawed tourist from Ohio and everyone who replaced their bike with a membership has finished selling their bikes.

sykerocker 

Nice rundown of the business. There are times I think that's what I'd be doing if I weren't already spending most of my day as a bookkeeper in a motorcycle shop. On the other hand, I've already learned once that the fastest way to ruin what you enjoy is to make a full-time business out of it. So I think I'll just stay with the profitable hobby-business I've got now.

I'm already complaining enough this morning that someone wants to see the green varsity I've got on Craigslist, so I'm going to have to take the car to work rather than one of the motorcycles, as I planned to do.

Gravity Aided

You guys are right, no way I'd combine hobby and business like I did with photography, back in the film age. Ran labs and stores, collected, appraised, etc. Now I drive a bus, and can admire bikes "spotted in the wild" without having to worry about restoring and selling. Well, maybe a few.