Every now and then, Wolfe and Fritz sniff the scent of a one-of-a-kind antique and chase
it to a place that's dark, strange, or even dangerous.
Here are some times when American Pickers found weirdness along with the treasures.
When Captain Kirk from Star Trek makes an order, you take it.
He'd contacted the Antique Archaeology and spoke with Danielle Colby, who passed along
the message to Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz that William Shatner wanted, nay needed, an
antique millstone for his garden.
Sure enough, because they're the best in the business, the Pickers found a millstone, a
gigantic tool used to process grain.
Hardly a jaded Hollywood big shot, Shatner made the surreal moment even more delicious
with some breathless declarations
"This is the signature piece.
The millstone is genius."
In a second-season episode, the Pickers went deep into Kentucky, to the home of an older
couple named Don and Nannette.
They had a barn where they'd tossed all kinds of junk, from branded signs to old TV sets.
As Wolfe looked around, he noticed a curtain that would otherwise have blended into the
wall.
Apparently not worried about deadly spiders or ghosts, he boldly just stuck his head through
the opening and came out wearing a very old, oversized, grotesque mask of screen comedian
Stan Laurel.
But where there's Laurel, there's longtime comedy partner Oliver Hardy.
Sure enough, there was another, even creepier mask that Fritz put on his head.
The masks were crumbling and probably haunted, but the pair bought them anyway.
The Pickers have paid multiple visits to the home of Ron, a.k.a.
"The Mole Man."
Beneath a typical-looking American Pickers rural property, with several outbuildings
filled with intriguing prospects, is Ron's actual home.
It's more than 20 feet beneath, in fact.
In the 2013 episode, Wolfe and Fritz arrive to Ron's home unannounced and attempt to navigate
the seemingly endless, cavernous, maze-like tunnels that Ron's been developing since 1965.
The guys squeeze through narrow tunnels, walking on narrow planks past wood, cinder blocks,
and junk until they get to a dead end and have to try another route.
“This place is like Indiana Jones meets Sanford and Son.
The narrow path, you know, all that stuff.
I'm jivin' on this."
Toward the end they unwisely hurry through, creeped out as they are, until they reach
Ron's door, found beyond a single piece of wood placed over a 20-foot-deep pit.
On a picking swing through New England in 2018, Wolfe and Fritz visited a lushly wooded
property in Chesterfield, Massachusetts.
The owner took them to a remote corner of his land and showed them a thoroughly rusted
vehicle decorated with a long-nosed cartoon character in a striped shirt and the word
"Aerosmith."
Could this derelict van actually have belonged to the band Aerosmith?
They were local to Boston.
Wolfe managed to make contact with an early member of Aerosmith who confirmed that yes,
this was the band's touring van.
Upon looking through the van, the Pickers found Persian rugs, old Budweiser cans, a
Three Dog Night sticker, and two of the filthiest mattresses that ever existed.
Homer Tate was an American original; a pioneer in the uniquely American art form of the "roadside
attraction."
He specialized in making hideous, macabre "artifacts" out of papier-mâché
mud, and real animal bones.
Then he advertised them — as real finds, not artistic creations — in the 1940s and
'50s, getting people to stop and take a gander for a small fee.
Tate is probably best known for "The Thing," an Arizona roadside oddity purporting to be
a mummified mother and child.
He eventually opened Tate's Curiosity Shop to display his wares, and it's full of the
kind of stuff the American Pickers love to find.
Indeed, Wolfe and Fritz came face to face with "Wolf Boy," a Homer Tate original that
looks like a combination of E.T. and a turtle, if either creature had fangs.
The story is that it's one of 26 mummies discovered in a cave in Peru, but it's merely an eerie
fake.
No matter what a viewer's opinion on taxidermy may be, they'd have to admit that a giant
building in rural New England in which every square inch is occupied by a dead, stuffed
animal is pretty weird.
Wolfe and Fritz visited that very place in a 2012 American Pickers episode, and grew
transfixed with two well preserved elephant heads, one partially real, the other entirely
artificial.
Wolfe decided he simply had to have the mostly real one, and paid an astounding $9,500 for
it.
With so much capital tied up in the elephant head, the Pickers needed to unload it quickly
as possible, and for as much money as possible.
They tasked Danielle back at the shop with finding a buyer.
"When I sent the boys to pick taxidermy stuff, I thought maybe they'd come back with a deer
head, some antlers, squirrel.
No, they come back with an elephant head.
Who buys an elephant head?"
Astonishingly, she located one in rock star Jack White, a guy who loves pachyderms so
much he named the White Stripes' classic 2003 album Elephant.
White tried to talk down the price, but the Pickers, having sunk such a huge sum of cash
into their find, didn't have a lot of wiggle room.
Eventually, White proposed a deal: He'd get the elephant head at their price if he threw
in some American Pickers-worthy bits of old-school Americana, specifically a black-and-white
photobooth and a jukebox.
The Pickers took the deal, then had to shell out an extra $1,000 to ship the elephant head.
Rockford, Illinois is famously the home of the great American rock band Cheap Trick,
and Fritz — a big fan — was extremely excited to see Rick's Picks, a rock n' roll
museum curated by and featuring the assorted musical memorabilia of Cheap Trick guitarist
Rick Nielsen.
Known for his boisterous stage personality, Nielsen's huge collection wowed Fritz and
Wolfe.
It included a number of the musician's famous novelty guitars, including a check-patterned
instrument and one with five necks.
Nielsen invited the Pickers to his warehouse to see even more of his stuff, and the guys
dropped about $2,500 on some albums, a poster, T-shirts, and traveling cases.
But they really wanted to take home one of Nielsen's guitars.
They haggled for a while, but Nielsen just wouldn't surrender his piece.
He finally let Fritz and Wolfe have it for free, on the condition that they keep it on
display at Antique Archaeology — they can't sell it.
"Keep it in Nashville so I can play it on Saturday or Sunday, or--"
"When you comin' in?"
"You can play it whenever you want!"
"You guys take it down there."
"Are you serious?
I'm serious."
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