American Pickers: Volume Two by A&E Home Video

Actors

• Frank Fritz
• Mike Wolfe
• Danielle Colby-Cushman

Format

• Closed-captioned
• Color
• NTSC

Editorial Review

If one man's trash is another man's treasure, then Frank Fritz and Mike Wolfe of the History Channel's American Pickers are the spokesmodels for the cause. Fritz and Wolfe run an antique/collectible resale business in Iowa, and travel the country in search of the gems among the refuse. And their journeys, and discoveries, make for surprisingly engaging viewing. In volume two of American Pickers, Frank and Mike, childhood pals who have infectious senses of adventure and humor, travel to the Carolinas and elsewhere in the South in search of elusive collectibles. In some cases, they visit other junk collectors and sellers, and in others, they get to dive into someone's grandpa's outbuildings stuffed with the collections of a lifetime. “If you wanted to throw it out, Uncle Jed would take it,” says one lady of the acres of stuff she inherited. This is just the kind of find that gets Frank's and Mike's pulses racing, and soon the adventure is off and running. Along the way, the pickers meet some great characters and forge fast friendships. There's the art of the dicker, which almost everyone seems to have perfected. And then there's the emotional connection that a seller, or even Frank or Mike, have for a particular object, which makes the negotiations that much more exciting. In North Carolina, Mike “totally fell in love” with an early Airstream trailer, and the curmudgeon on whose property it is refuses to name a price. Finally he grudgingly says “Seventy-five,” and Mike has to go off and decide if he wants to pour that much into something that's trashed, needs a full restoration, and will be a real challenge to transport back to Iowa. Finally he tells the seller, “OK, 7,500 it is!” and the seller goes, “I meant 75,000!” and Mike has to leave disappointed. The appeal of American Pickers is in the sense of road-trip adventure of the two stars, but also in that “what about my stuff?” feeling the viewer gets. When Frank and Mike score something particularly valuable, the feeling is like a three-point basket right at the buzzer. —A.T. Hurley