Re: President of Chile's Packard on American Pickers

Posted by Leeedy On 2019/6/10 13:35:20

The Pickers have gone out on a limb a lot of times, but there were a few shows that were just beyond absurd... and nobody was minding the facts or the history. Like the time they supposedly bought a "1939 Plymouth" (of course it wasn't, but nobody even noticed). See JoeSantana's posting in the "Packard history from 1945" thread? See the REAL 1939 Plymouth in his posting? Compare this to the supposed 1939 Plymouth the picker guys bought on the show. The Plymouth on the show was NOT a 1939-which had very distinctive squared-off headlights molded into the fenders. And they've made some ridiculous claims with bicycles too. But people obviously love the show and they just keep on forging ahead-no matter how many the mistakes or how the show is so obviously staged. And people are obviously still tuning in and listening to the cash register sound.

I'm sure the pickers make piles of cash. The show is designed for ratings, not facts. They really don't show up at collector's houses in their van while a video camera man is already stationed strategically inside! Surely nobody sane and past 8 years old really believes this. They fly in from wherever they are and the rest of the staging and props equipment arrive in a giant transport truck. THEN they pull up in the van, pretending to be fresh off of the road.

Probably the worst part of this show and others like it is that they have totally crocked the idea of what "collector" means. Anyone who seriously collects can now be pre-analyzed as a wheeler-dealer. Thanks to these shows, the public is now convinced that collecting is merely a euphemism for buying low and selling high. Since this show and ones like it (some complete with the "cha-ching!" cash register sound), the public now views collecting anything vintage as "investing." And people now want to quote "values" and "market" based on some TV show. I can't buy anything anymore without the seller telling me, "...ya know they had one-a these on that pickers show on TV and they said it's worth..." A REAL collector likely will accumulate things regardless of the value and with no special intent of selling for a massive profit. I cannot tell you of how many times over the last few decades when I dragged something home only to have people along the way laugh at it or me-thinking I was out of my mind.

Some of those same passionless, vision-less people who were laughing decades ago are now asking things like, "How did you know that Packard would be worth so much?" I liked it better when they laughed.

One final thought on how horribly wrong things have morphed over the last 20 years. I corrected a museum on something they had on display... and the response was "...We don't care if what we're displaying is right or wrong! Our policy is to never let the facts get in the way of a good story." So help me. They actually said this... and proudly so.