Series Description

The American Pickers TV show is a 60 minute reality series on the History Channel about two down-to-Earth guys who travel the United States looking for treasures from yesteryear that have been gathering dust in attics, warehouses and barns across America. They buy those things that collectors would die to own including rare old motorcycles or even simply hard to find parts, old bicycles, old advertising signs, toys from the 1960s and earlier and just about anything else that can be called antique or unique. Their shop manager Danielle gets leads to connect them with potential sellers and they also often simply drive around the backroads looking for properties with lots of outbuildings that might contain antique gold. Danielle also finds buyers for the more unusual items and sets the boys up with appraisers that determine whether Mike and Frank made a good deal on an object.

American Pickers Cast

Mike Wolfe
Frank Fritz
Danielle Colby-Cushman

American Pickers Opening Narrative

Mike: "I'm Mike Wolfe."

Frank: "And I'm Frank Fritz"

Mike: "And we're pickers"

Frank: "We travel the back roads of America looking for rusty gold. We're looking for amazing things buried in people's garages and barns."

Mike: "What most people see as junk, we see as dollar signs."

Frank: "We'll buy "anything" we think we can make a buck on."

Mike: "Each item we pick has a history all its own and the people we meet? Well, they're a breed all their own. We make a living telling the history of America...one piece at a time."

American Pickers Trivia

Mike, Frank and Danielle operate their business, "Antique Archeology" from Le Claire, Iowa located where Interstate 80 crosses the Mississippi River. Interstate 80 gives them easy access to the Northeastern United States and Interstate 74 which connects to 80 just a few miles after crossing the Mississippi offers them a straight shot to the Southeastern United States. Other than the Midwest, those are the two areas where Mike and Frank tend to go to find their rusty gold!

Mike and Frank put Danielle in charge of finding a second location in 2011 and she found an old early 1900s automobile factory in Nashville, Tennessee, 530 miles from their home base in Iowa. The car that was built there was called the "Marathon" and was manufactured from 1911-1914. Ten thousand units were being sold annually by 1912 and demand was huge due the high quality and dependability of the car. The reason you've probably never heard of the car is that the management of the company was not nearly as great as the engineering of the car and the business failed for that reason in 1914.

The main reason that the guys opened a second location was so that they wouldn't have to haul the tonnage they were finding in the Southeast all the way back to Iowa.

By the second season American Pickers became such a hit with audiences that it garnered the title as the number one new non-fiction series of 2010!