The Bootlegger’s Basement | American Pickers (S16) |

MIKE: We’re winding our way up the East Coast.
Dani gave us a lead to a guy named Art.
He inherited his family’s house and shops.
FRANK: This is a nice little town.
MIKE: Cute little town, man. Sea Cliff.
FRANK: It’s right here.
MIKE: Right here, right here. FRANK: Yep, got it.
MIKE: Oh, that’s him. [laughs] FRANK: Hello, you Art?
ART: Yes, I am.
MIKE: Hey, nice to meet ya. I’m Mike.
FRANK: I’m Frank. ART: Nice to meet you guys.
MIKE: Sleepy little town, huh?
ART: It’s a great little town, yeah.
MIKE: This Main Street has the feel of small-town America, but we’re only 30 miles outside of New York City.
This is not what I expected.
FRANK: There used to be a tailor shop here next door, huh?
ART: Yeah, my great-grandmother’s.
Come on, I’ll show it to you.
MIKE: So… when was this closed?
ART: 1954.
FRANK: Oh my gosh.
MIKE: How come you guys haven’t done anything since then?
ART: My grandmother’s brothers lived in this house, and they just kept it as a tribute to my great-grandmother.
It’s just like… time stopped.
ART: When my great-grandmother passed away, they just closed the doors, they just never wanted to deal with it.
So they just left everything as it was.
FRANK: There’s the cash register, there’s the wrapping up the paper…
ART: And the customers’ clothes are still on the racks.
FRANK: No kidding! MIKE: [laughs] MIKE: What’s your plan for this space?
What are you gonna do with it?
ART: You know something, my great-uncle just passed away, and I really haven’t thought too much about it.
I would like to do something with it.
ART: I just think that my great-uncles felt that they were honouring the memory of my great-grandmother by leaving things as they were.
With him gone, there’s no reason to keep all these old things, and we’d like to eventually fix the house up, and possibly move in or at least rent it.
MIKE: So this was connected to the house, so whoever worked here…
ART: Lived in the house.
MIKE: …would have been the shopkeeper and they lived at the house? ART: Exactly.
MIKE: And it’s always been in your family?
ART: It’s been in my family since 1902.
MIKE: So what’s this?
ART: That is my great-great-uncle, and he was a bootlegger during Prohibition.
MIKE: Okay.
ART: And that’s where the family’s financial stability came from, basically.
ART: He would make liquor in the basement of this house.
ART: I just know that all the brothers and the nephews, when they were young, would take the liquor out into Hempstead Harbor.
MIKE: Uh-huh…
ART: Meet the employees of the Gold Coast families, like, you know, the Woolworths and those…
MIKE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ART: And sell them the liquor in the middle of the harbor.
MIKE: So this is a great family piece.
ART: This is an excellent family piece.
MIKE: Oh my gosh, I love that.
That’s so cool.
MIKE: Is that the basement? Can we look in the basement?
ART: Yeah, sure, absolutely.
MIKE: Alright. Let’s check that out.
Ooh…
MIKE: As soon as you get into a basement like this, all your senses come alive!
Every nook and cranny, every crevice was an opportunity for somebody to stick something that they never wanted to see again.
So when you’re down in these places, that’s where you look.
MIKE: Let’s see what this is…
Alright…
What’s this advertisement right here?
Cloth… craft… serge suits.
Okay, so this is gonna advertise a suit.
Let’s see if we can get it down here and open it– Oh! …open it up.
♪ MIKE: Okay, so there’s part of it.
Check out the hand.
MIKE: The subject matter isn’t that great, the colours aren’t that bright, but what’s cool about this piece is how clever it is.
The bottom of the piece is a hanger, so the suit actually hangs on the sign.
MIKE: 30 bucks.
ART: How about 35?
MIKE: Yeah…
Alright, done.
MIKE: Art just told us that his great-great-uncle made illegal booze down in the basement during Prohibition.
So I can’t wait to see what’s down there.
MIKE: Ah, look at that! Here, look at this.
FRANK: Wow…
MIKE: Grab it, see if the bottom’s cracked out of it.
Alright…
So if there’s a bottom crack…
See if the top’s around here.
ART: My guess would be that the crocks were for packaging bootleg liquor.
MIKE: Is that bottom of that cracked?
Turn that upside down.
You looking at it, Frankie?
[Frank knocks on crock] MIKE: Is that a spider web, or is that a crack?
Right there… FRANK: Spider web.
MIKE: A lot of the utilitarian crocks were mass-produced.
What this one’s got going for it is that it’s a water cooler, it’s got the spout…
But the downside is, it’s missing the lid.
MIKE: How about… 50 bucks?
ART: Yeah, that’ll work.
FRANK: No lid. ART: That’ll work.
MIKE: You know, if I find the top, I’ll give you more.
MIKE: The person I’m gonna sell this to, that’s gonna pay the most, is the guy that has the lid.
ART: So now we’re gonna check out the space above the store.
FRANK: Art has been giving us full access to his family’s old stores, which date back to the early 1900s.
MIKE: So what is this building now?
ART: This building is now a wine store.
FRANK: We’ve already picked the tailor shop, and now he’s taking us next door.
ART: And this is…
what’s left of the stationary store.
MIKE: Where I’m from, they call them five-and-dimes.
But here on the East Coast, they call them stationary stores.
They sold a little bit of everything, from tobacco to toys.
ART: This was a space that I’ve always been curious about, because when I was a little kid, we were never allowed up here.
So we didn’t know if they had liquor up here or if they had dead bodies up here!
MIKE: [laughs] ART: You know?
ART: So after my uncle died, we were able to get in here for the first time. FRANK: Okay.
MIKE: So it looks like it’s all new old stock stuff from the store downstairs. ART: Exactly.
FRANK: You know, some people’s three favourite words are ‘I love you’.
My favourite three words are ‘new old stock’.
FRANK: This is new old stock.
You don’t find these too often.
They’re made in New York City.
FRANK: For us to get access to stuff like this, that hasn’t been touched, this is amazing.
It’s like a type of time travel.
FRANK: I’ve got a soldier set here, a bubble set, a hop-over.
Let’s throw one Chinese checkers in there.
How about 15 bucks apiece? That’d be $300.
ART: Okay. We’ll do that.
FRANK: Good deal. MIKE: That’s incredible!
MIKE: The fact that these are never played with.
They’re still in the original wrapping.
You got 13. How about an even 3 bills?
ART: Yeah, that’ll work.
MIKE: Okay.
These are usually the hot sellers.
♪ FRANK: So you got a bunch of Marx…
these little like, little gas station things…
ART: Yeah. FRANK: You drive your car in.
ART: Whoa!
FRANK: Some of them had pumps.
You could fill your gasoline up and it’d shoot down the end.
ART: The Marx gas stations were incredible tin toys.
I remember playing with them as a kid, and running the cars down the little ramps.
FRANK: Did they used to sell these, do you think?
ART: Yes, they did.
FRANK: Here you got another one.
This one’s a little smaller than the other one.
But you know, they had, these were really cool, they had great graphics to them, you know.
ART: Sure.
FRANK: These are like donator toys, you know?
Somebody needs a piece, somebody needs a pump.
‘Cause they’re in so-so condition.
I’d do 40 apiece.
ART: Well, I really would like to just keep one.
FRANK: Keep one? ART: Yeah.
FRANK: Okay, which one?
ART: I’ll probably keep that one.
FRANK: So 40 apiece on these two?
ART: That should work.
FRANK: Okay. I’ll take these two.
FRANK: They’re just cool.
I mean, you just don’t see them that often.
To the right person that wants to display their little cars and have a little thing like that, I think I can double my money.
♪ MIKE: Boo… Frank, boo…
So I found three Halloween pieces over there.
Are there any other boxes with Halloween in it?
‘Cause Halloween’s hot.
ART: Not that I’m aware of. MIKE: Okay.
MIKE: This one here is actually a later piece.
If you read the sticker on the side, it says it’s glow-in-the-dark.
They reproduce a lot of this stuff.
Obviously these are real.
MIKE: Halloween has always been collectible, and the stuff that’s most collectible are the things that didn’t survive.
Like these paper-mache pumpkins.
The eyes, the nose, the mouth, it’s all on translucent paper, so you can imagine how delicate these things were.
MIKE: Double-sided faces like this are more valuable than a single-sided face.
Uh, the great thing these have going on about them is that they’re real.
MIKE: It’s sometimes difficult to tell the original from the reproduction.
But if you look at the bottom of the pumpkin, the wear, the colour, how bright it is, how shiny it is.
I mean, it just takes years and years of buying these to really understand the differences.
MIKE: I think these in this condition…
you know, that’s a… $150 piece.
ART: Really? MIKE: Maybe 200 bucks.
MIKE: I’d do, uh… 250 on them.
The way I’m figuring that is…
100, 200… and then 50 on this one.
ART: I was thinking like 275.
MIKE: I’d do 275.
ART: They’ve been sitting there for God knows how long.
I was shocked at the value of those things.
Wow… They had incredible value.
MIKE: As I get hot… ART: Yeah, I know, me too.
MIKE: And as I get older, I gotta do the math in my head.
ART: Me too, me too.
MIKE: These are extremely rare.
Now, they’ve gone down in price a little bit because they reproduce these, and they do an amazing job of it.
But the originals still command decent money.
MIKE: Ahh, let’s see here.
MIKE: You want to go through every box.
You never know what you’re going to find.
MIKE: Oh, wow…
Look at that. ART: Wow.
MIKE: Football, inflated, ready for play.
Look at the helmet, that’s a leather helmet.
MIKE: Some of the boxes aren’t in great condition, but the ones that are are fascinating to me.
MIKE: So here’s one that’s in good shape; the box is in good shape.
Here’s one that the ball’s out of it.
Let’s see what it looks like.
Ah…
Oh my gosh, these are great.
MIKE: These are leather footballs for kids, but they’re in the original packaging, and the graphics on the outside with the player…
They’re awesome!
MIKE: I’m thinking 200.
You got four of them here.
ART: I’m thinking…
…maybe 250?
MIKE: Alright, let’s do it. I’ll do 250.
MIKE: Something this old, that has survived this many years, it’s a collectible not just for someone that wants to collect kids toys, but somebody that collects sports memorabilia.
So awesome!
MIKE: Not a lot of stuff left up here, but what’s left up here is…
FRANK: Was good.
MIKE: You know, it’s got some legs underneath it.
ART: Really good stuff, yeah.
MIKE: I’ll start loading some of this stuff up.
I’ll put these in here.
Frank, you grab whatever you got.
FRANK: I gotcha.
MIKE: Just when you think places like this don’t exist, one comes up.
FRANK: I’ll grab, you pack. MIKE: Alright, I gotcha.
MIKE: There wasn’t one thing here that was big money, but this is the kind of pick that you dream about.
FRANK: Art… it’s been fun. ART: It’s been real.