Frank Fritz's Favorite Thing About American Pickers May Surprise You
It's easy to see why the likes of Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz of "American Pickers" fame love their jobs so much. They basically get to travel around the country looking for cool, interesting antiques. And if something tickles their fancy just right, they make an offer with the hopes of re-selling the piece to a lucky buyer. Even if they don't manage to make a deal, they at least get to check out cool stuff few people will get to see in their lives, from vintage motorcycles to a van used by Aerosmith.
Who knows how many things Frank Fritz has taken home for himself for his own leisure? But according to an interview he did with The Quad-City Times in 2013, the stuff is only a small percentage of why he loves doing what he does. While he's always itching to make a deal, he says that he just can't get enough of meeting all of the intriguing people that make up the United States.
Frank Fritz enjoys 'meeting the people' on American Pickers
It's hard to imagine Frank Fritz doing anything else with his life other than picking. He just seems so well-suited for the trade, and he talks about how he's used his intrinsic ability to retain facts to give people fair prices while on the road. During the interview, he mentioned, "The first year of the Barbie was 1959. G.I. Joe was 1961. I have a lot of these useless stats. That's one reason I like to talk to people and share all of this stuff. It's also the reason my prices are so good."
Fritz is obviously a collector of rare, valuable items. So often, he knows precisely what he's looking at, and on occasion, he can tell the owner more about an item than they can. However, perusing through various antiques is only half the battle. You also need to know how to talk to people so that they'll trust you with these items they've had for decades, and that's really what Fritz enjoys most.
As he went on to say, "The best part is meeting the people. It's not the stuff. Believe it or not, not everybody has cable. A lot of the people have never seen the show." That undoubtedly helps with the negotiations. The people aren't necessarily being star-struck; they're just talking to a guy interested in buying what they own. Seeing how Fritz was on hundreds of episodes of "American Pickers," he undoubtedly had the chance to meet a ton of fantastic people across his journeys.