Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Picking And Pawning

Monday December 6th, 2010 - Kenosha, WI

   First it was Antiques Roadshow, now it’s American Pickers and Pawn Stars. People are always trying to score something for nothing, and any variation of that theme works to get the attention of the human spirit of adventure. Who doesn’t want to find buried treasure?

   Believe me, I’ve been trying to hunt it down since I was a kid. I’ve always been up for a hunt, and have tried to score the mother lode payoff off of everything from sports cards to old cars to anything else I could buy cheap and try to spin at a profit. I failed. Every time.

   Oh, I hit on a few things - but not that many. One time I found a plastic Hartland Statue baseball player figurine of Hank Aaron in a thrift store for $2.50 and sold it for $200. The thrill of finding a tidbit on the dung heap is pretty exciting, but it’s not always worth what it takes to get it. Of the hundreds or even thousands of thrift stores I’ve searched, that’s it.

   There were a few other scattered chatchkes, but nothing over $100 profit. For all the gas and time invested, it just doesn’t add up in the end. The main reason I went was to kill the countless hours of spare time on the road in strange towns with nothing else to do. Some comics drank or did drugs to pass the time, I tried to find trinkets and baubles to resell.

   There’s nothing wrong with any of this, but I can totally see a new wave of newbies that watch these shows that are going to start trying it themselves. It’s just like when the wave of poker shows started showing up on TV. All kinds of new players came out of the walls and woodwork and those were the ones the experienced players cleaned out of cash first.

   I’ve been around collectibles, thrift shops and antique pickers my whole life. It’s one of the few things I used to watch my father do that actually interested me. He used to be able to go to rummage sales and cherry pick things he could turn around and resell at a sale of his own for two or three times what he paid. He was actually pretty good at the process.

   The trouble is, it was all small time bug piss. Buying something for a buck and selling it for $5 sounds great in theory, but there’s the gas in getting to the place to buy it, forking a buck out to obtain it, hauling it home, getting it ready for your own sale, haggling with an unwashed public…blah blah blah. That $4 ‘profit’ isn’t even close to being worth all that.

   Not to me anyway. I do admit, I enjoy the hell out of watching those shows right now. It captures the imagination, and there are real life treasures out there. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of not only hard work but smarts to locate them and acquire them at a price that can have room for a healthy profit to make a living. Those guys are all taking gigantic risks.

   What isn’t realistic is to expect to go out one time and score an original Declaration Of Independence document for a quarter at a Goodwill in Sheboygan. It takes research and a poker player’s mentality, and not everybody has those traits. I know I don’t. At one time I thought I might, but after all these years of looking for the easy buck, I know it never did exist and never will. Those guys work for their profits, but I don’t have time anymore.

Posted via email from Dobie Maxwell's "Dented Can" Diary

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