Scrappers Will Dig the Deepest for a Buck! | American Pickers (S16) | History

After a mammoth pick on a 25-acre homestead, the guys comb through the largest collection of sideshow memorabilia they’ve ever seen. See more in Season 16, Episode 8, “The Greatest Pick on Earth.”

MIKE: So we’re back on the road, heading towards Ohio.
FRANK: We’re on our way to meet Ray and his son Jesse.
Ray’s a garbage and a scrapper guy.
It’s a family business; they’ve been on this property for three generations.
[honks horn] MIKE: [laughs] MIKE: There he is!
MIKE: Hey, you Ray?
RAY: Yes, sir!
MIKE: How’re you doing, my friend?
RAY: Alright.
MIKE: I’m Mike, nice to meet ya.
RAY: Pleasure to meet you, sir.
MIKE: Yeah, this is Frank.
What you got going on here? You Jesse?
JESSE: Yep. FRANK: Nice to meet you, Ray.
MIKE: Hey, I’m Mike, nice to meet ya.
MIKE: What you got going on here, Ray?
RAY: My grandfather parked that old Plymouth there in 1955.
FRANK: I’ll be darned.
RAY: It’s just an eyesore, so I just thought I’d pull it out, and throw it in the scrap pile.
MIKE: You’re gonna pull it out of the ground and scrap it?
RAY: Yeah.
MIKE: The great thing about a scrapper is they see value in anything.
And they will go the distance, and dig the deepest, to get the buck.
MIKE: This a typical day around here?
Yeah? [laughs] RAY: Crazy stuff goes on around here.
How many people’s got cars buried in their front yard?
[laughs] Ya’mean?
MIKE: That thing’s in there!
RAY: Well, the trees growed up through it.
FRANK: I mean, you could tell right off the bat, Ray and his son are hard workers.
MIKE: You guys are in the trash business, so you’re cleaning out houses, you’re cleaning out buildings, stuff like that?
RAY: I’m 70-some years old, and I enjoy it!
MIKE: Yeah. Hell, yeah.
MIKE: Ray is a garbage man that doesn’t want to throw anything away.
RAY: I’ll let you open that.
But watch a big snake jumps out.
MIKE: [laughs] MIKE: This is a guy that’s been cleaning out houses and scrapping his whole life.
MIKE: Yeah…
FRANK: This looks like mostly household stuff.
Lamps, blenders…
RAY: We never had nothin’! FRANK: Okay.
RAY: And everything looked so cool and so neat when I’d get it, it made my heart feel good.
MIKE: When you’d find stuff?
RAY: Yes, sir.
RAY: I try to help people; I take tons of clothes out of dumpster boxes; furniture…
and I’ll give it to Good Will.
RAY: I mean, they’re packed!
MIKE: They’re packed.
RAY: Tools…
FRANK: Packs of knives here.
MIKE: A wheelchair.
MIKE: A lot of this stuff is just household items.
Now to Ray, that has a tremendous amount of value, because he’s giving it to people that need it.
MIKE: Alright, how about this one, Frank?
Baby clothes and golf clubs.
MIKE: He is of the mindset to pay it forward.
And I get that.
He’s a scrapper with a huge heart.
MIKE: Let’s see here. Look at those suckers!
RAY: Those were your mom’s, back in the day.
MIKE: Yeah?
JESSE: My mom died when I was little.
The family all lives on the same property.
My aunt was the daycare person, my grandmother was constantly there, 24/7.
So I was always floating between houses.
MIKE: What was her name?
RAY: Beatrice. We called her Bea, short.
She could dance in them.
MIKE: Yeah?
RAY: She could allemande left, do-si-do right.
MIKE: That’s right…
Those are cool, you want to hang onto these?
JESSE: She died when I was so little, I would never have known her in them.
RAY: He was 3 years old when she died.
MIKE: Okay.
I mean, we’ve got a store in Nashville, there’s always people coming in looking for…
RAY: Well, there they are.
MIKE: To hold onto these boots all of these years shows that Ray is a sentimental guy.
And that’s also why he wants to sell them.
He wants to know that they have a life beyond this storage locker.
MIKE: How about, uh… 50 bucks?
RAY: That’s fine with me.
MIKE: Alright. I appreciate it.
I don’t wanna buy the memory, I just wanna buy the boots.
Nobody can buy the memory.
RAY: I remember her, she’s in my heart, she won’t never leave it. MIKE: That’s right.
MIKE: This is a big moment for them, because we’re digging up his past.
This is one of those moments where it was just…
head on, and he’s like, you know what, yes, it’s time.
FRANK: Here’s something I noticed right here.
MIKE: Oh yeah, there you go, Frankie.
FRANK: Oh, it’s covering the well?
RAY: Yeah.
FRANK: It’s a Pure sign. This is gasoline.
MIKE: Whoa.
FRANK: Could bend it out a little bit.
FRANK: It’s double-sided, it’s porcelain, it’s not in the best shape, but it’s still a great, you know, petroliana item.
FRANK: What are you think you’re asking for it?
RAY: Then I don’t have nothing to cover my well up!
MIKE: Can’t you get a piece of wood?
RAY: Wood absorbs water.
MIKE: Huh.
Well, if he makes it worth your while…
RAY: I need to get something to put over it.
RAY: I just don’t want nobody to be walking out there in the dark and just… find that hole unexpectedly.
The fall ain’t gonna hurt ya, it’s the sudden stop!
[laughs] Y’know what I mean?
FRANK: How about $400?
RAY: I don’t know.
FRANK: You could buy some sheet metal.
RAY: Is that your best offer?
FRANK: Well, that’s where I had to– I had to start somewhere.
RAY: It’s worth about 525.
FRANK: How about 475?
Alright. You can buy some…
You can buy some other metal to go across there.
FRANK: I know collectors out here that would love this piece.
So I’m going to rescue it before it rots away covering a well.
MIKE: What’s in here?
RAY: Motorcycle stuff.
FRANK: Alright.
RAY: That’s a Turbo.
JESSE: 280, CX Turbo.
FRANK: Turbo 280?
MIKE: That’s Frank’s nickname in high school, Turbo.
FRANK: Yeah.
RAY: There’s one of my Harley’s.
FRANK: Now we’re getting to the good stuff.
MIKE: Frank, ooh!
FRANK: Oh, what do we got for the Chopper?
This is an Ironhead Sportster.
This is a stock Harley Davidson frame that somebody spent some time molding.
They did this back in the ’70s, where it was real popular.
FRANK: You got a title with it? RAY: Yes.
MIKE: How long have you owned this?
Like, have you owned it since, what is it, ’77 on here?
RAY: I bought it way before that.
RAY: I bought that when I was about 17, 18 years old.
‘Cause back then you had to be cool, ya’mean, growing with all the other guys.
RAY: I had pictures of it when it was in the car show.
FRANK: When it was super nice and it was all chromed out…?
MIKE: Did it win the car show?
RAY: Yes, it did.
MIKE: It did, oh man. I bet.
RAY: It swelled my head up.
I had to go to the hardware store and get a tube of Preparation-H, rub it on my head, shrink it back down, ya’mean.
MIKE: [laughs] FRANK: I mean, a lot of guys now these days, they’re all trying to build them like this, but this is a real period piece.
Somebody put an S&S super on here.
RAY: I did that.
I like the flames about that far coming out of the exhaust when you’re driving down the road.
MIKE: Yeah, man, you and me both.
You and me both!
FRANK: It looks like it’s been sitting here for quite some time.
RAY: But it will fire right up.
FRANK: It will not fire right up, I don’t…
RAY: I bet you it will.
FRANK: This bike is killer.
I mean, it’s right out of the 1970s, and it’s obvious Ray thinks a lot about it.
But no amount of memories are going to start a motorcycle up that’s been sitting around this long.
RAY: I’ll bet you this bike against your van!
That’s how serious– MIKE: That it’ll fire up right now?
RAY: If I spray ether in it.
MIKE: Oh okay, well, alright.
FRANK: This bike is cool, but there’s no way this old thing’s going to kick over.
So we pull it outside, he says, you know what, it’ll start in one kick.
FRANK: You got it.
[motorcycle engine sputtering] MIKE: Yeah!
FRANK: Seems like if there was gas; there’s no gas.
MIKE: Yeah, no! But it’s…
FRANK: It starts!
MIKE: I could see what you’re saying, though.
It’s got some oomph to it!
FRANK: The motor kicks over, it sputters a little bit, I mean, you could tell with some gas, this baby would run.
JESSE: I used to know exactly when he came home.
You’d hear that thing coming straight down the highway.
MIKE: [laughs] RAY: It’s old school.
JESSE: I hear… rrrwwrrrr!
RAY: [laughs] JESSE: And I’d be like, ‘Dad’s coming off the Expressway right now.
RAY: When I was young, I had a beard down to here, I just thought I was the coolest guy in town, ya’mean?
MIKE: [laughs] I could see you with the beard split completely down the middle…
RAY: Oh, yeah.
MIKE: Kicking it!
RAY: We never had to wear a helmet or goggles or nothing back in the day.
MIKE: Yeah, heck no, man.
♪ ♪ ♪ MIKE: When you’re into motorcycles, and you love riding them, you get close to it; they become part of the family.
Now, Ray’s had this bike a long time.
It’s not what it once was, but to him…
it’s still beautiful.
RAY: Well, Frank, you seen it start.
FRANK: I seen it start.
RAY: And we’re [?] around, ya’mean?
[Beep] or get off the pot, ya’mean!
FRANK: I could do $2,000.
RAY: It’s gonna take that to clean your chrome.
[laughs] FRANK: Chrome don’t get you home.
RAY: Yeah, but this is old school!
FRANK: I mean, what kind of money do you think?
RAY: I say $5,000 would touch it.
FRANK: Going down the road in great condition, this bike, all shined up, running perfect, everything was probably a $5,000 bike.
FRANK: You know, if you got the shifting mechanism fixed a little bit, the brake on the other side, had it shined up, there’s guys out there that’re looking for this style bike.
FRANK: You don’t find these that often, so this is kind of a rare piece.
RAY: It’s gonna take a lot to take this out of my heart, y’know what I mean?
FRANK: I can understand that.
RAY: It a place in my life right here, growing up.
MIKE: I hear ya.
FRANK: 3,500 wouldn’t buy it? RAY: Nope.
FRANK: No, okay.
FRANK: I tried one last time at 3,500, and that was really stretching it, but this is where sentimental value exceeds retail value.
RAY: I would hate to sell it for 5, because it’s part of my soul.
FRANK: Okay, I don’t want to take your soul, that’s for sure.
MIKE: It’s cool.
FRANK: It is cool, I’m glad you let us look at it.
RAY: I had so much enjoyment with it, I just decided I’m going to keep it.
MIKE: When I pick a place like this, I realize that it’s much bigger than me.
Because what’s happening is these places are disappearing, and once they’re gone, the stories are gone, the history’s gone.
The smallest thing in here matters.
MIKE: [laughs] MIKE: Ray’s story matters.
MIKE: It was an honour, my friend, it was an honour.
FRANK: Thanks, Ray.
RAY: It’s fun to see all the stuff I collected over the period of years; it brought back good memories.
MIKE: You find the Indian in the bottom of the pile, you let me know!
RAY: I’ll find it, I’ll find it.
FRANK: Alright. MIKE: [laughs] FRANK: We’ll see you again. JESSE: You guys take care.
RAY: Drive safely!
RAY: They lifted my spirits up so high.
MIKE: Sweet scrappin’!
[honks horn]