How many of these hoarders (that’s what they are) do you think are listing these items for sale or having yard sales? Answer: none. Most of the items that are “picked” would most likely have been hauled to the dump when the property is cleared after a death or court ordered cleanup.
I’m not saying that they don’t take advantage of some people. But those people have the option of not selling or asking for more money. If you watched on a regular basis, you would see it happen quite often. The whole point of that kind of business is to buy low (wholesale) and sell high (retail).
“Pickers” is just a shortened form of “cherry pickers” which describes exactly what they are doing…going in and finding the most valuable items and relieving the owners of them, leaving the original collectors with, well, junk. Seems a little creepy to me considering the obvious poverty of some of their suppliers.
And yeah, if the cameras weren’t rolling there’s no way they’d pay some of the prices they do, and there’s certainly no way they’d go back and give somebody more money. And I suspect that PR considerations are at least part of the reason we get value “estimates” instead of actual sale prices.
I guess we’re going to have 2 different schools of thought here. At most sites I can see the owner dying and the family letting the stuff sit or getting rid of it any way they can. They aren’t interested and driven to get fair prices for the items. Also the lanky guy especially looks for pieces of rusty old junk, if they weren’t put back into circulation they would turn to dust because the owner will never get around to dealing with all that stuff.
Several actually. It’s a great way to build rapport, establish yourself as an honest buyer and buy more shit, not just from the guy who may have more banners, but from his hoarding friends as well.
Reputation is everything in picking (with knowledge of the goods and a good buyers list a tie for second). They bought themselves a bit of good reputation there, which will cause sellers to spread the word, invite them over, and let their guard down when haggling.
It’s actually a fairly common technique in the antiques and collectibles market.