Thread: OT- Auto restoration and antique pickers on TV- Is this even remotely for real ?

Originally Posted by david n

Of course not all, but the little I used to watch I found not worth the time to watch. So I can and will paint it with a broad stroke and declare here and now that ALL TV does indeed suck.

If you round off the percentage to the nearest whole number, it comes to 100%, but there are a few programs worth watching, mainly documentaries. Bethany Hughes' programs on ancient Greece are recent ones that come to mind and in the past there have been various similar ones on the BBC model that were very informative.

When a program starts in a living room with a sofa in the middle of the floor instead of against a wall, you know instantly that it is a loser, because it is there so a bunch of idiots can chase each other around it or lean over the back to console someone who has been even more stupid than usual.

Bill

Originally Posted by Maxim

I've been watching this series lately on youtube, its quite interesting.

All of Mark's "Is Born" series are worth watching imo, he does everything from a chopper (the flying kind), to an old motorcycle rebuilds, kit cars, racers and classics in between.

Originally Posted by Milacron

I guess it's a generational thing but I remember thinking cartoons like Scooby Doo represented the downfall of the great cartoon era that Tex Avery and Chuck Jones created. But I guess it was before that really with the crap that Hanna-Barbera conjured up. Re non cartoons, back in the early 70's when it had faded from memory a bit, I would occassionaly tell folks that IMHO, the Andy Griffith Show was the best TV series in the history of television...but most would look at me like I had two heads

My dad loved the Andy Griffith Show, he (and me) only started seeing the re-runs starting in the late 90s. We kept watching the re-runs right into the late 00s and early 01.

Bonanza was another show we loved watching but once you see an episode, it takes awhile to see a re-run cause you got to let enought time to pass to forget the episode. Bonanza got kinda stale towards the later episodes.

---

Superb TV drama is the 1970s BBC series " The Onedin Line " . Tis a story of a 18th century enterprising Liverpudlian ship owner. Lots of seafaring and maritime footage.

Another great British TV is " Jeeves and Wooster " which PBS ran during the 90s.

1970s to early 80s British comedy " Mind your Language " , quite funny but would never run in today's sensitive climate.

The reality is simple, all of these shows are predominately crap. I still enjoy watching them, but the only reality I see is that the general public is very gullable. I'd like to go into one of these homes that was built in a week, or remodeled in a week, and closely inspect the craftsmanship. Whenever I watch the home shows, the corner gaps in the crown molding always looks like shit, and the camera man usually pans by so fast the average person doesn't see it. These instances are very common.
The "move that buss" show sucks the most. The general concept is great, helping a family with special needs, or special circumstances. I wonder how many times the idiot with the bull horn has had the crap beat out of him by a laborer who is simply annoyed??? I can't sit through a hour of it. Usually I watch the first 5 minutes, and have the wife tell me when the reveal starts. A week my ass. All of the design, scheduling, construction, etc, etc. I'll bet it takes 3 months of just planning for everything to get staged so it can be done in a week.

Originally Posted by zr1nsx

The reality is simple, all of these shows are predominately crap. I still enjoy watching them, but the only reality I see is that the general public is very gullable. I'd like to go into one of these homes that was built in a week, or remodeled in a week, and closely inspect the craftsmanship. Whenever I watch the home shows, the corner gaps in the crown molding always looks like shit, and the camera man usually pans by so fast the average person doesn't see it. These instances are very common.
The "move that buss" show sucks the most. The general concept is great, helping a family with special needs, or special circumstances. I wonder how many times the idiot with the bull horn has had the crap beat out of him by a laborer who is simply annoyed??? I can't sit through a hour of it. Usually I watch the first 5 minutes, and have the wife tell me when the reveal starts. A week my ass. All of the design, scheduling, construction, etc, etc. I'll bet it takes 3 months of just planning for everything to get staged so it can be done in a week.

Nobody figures out before hand that the new house gets re evaluated for taxes and the family can not afford to live there after the remodel. It happened around my area !

Originally Posted by JB @ C and L Machine

Nobody figures out before hand that the new house gets re evaluated for taxes and the family can not afford to live there after the remodel. It happened around my area !

Please dont tell me they put a McMansion in freekin CAMDEN ???????
That would double the tax base of the intire city...

Originally Posted by Gary E

Please dont tell me they put a McMansion in freekin CAMDEN ???????
That would double the tax base of the intire city...

Almost...Pennsauken!

The one I wonder about is Barter Kings and tax implications. They take some item and barter a few times to get to some other item. $200 for a $700 item for a $1200 item for $1400 item for a $2200 item and so on. Don't they owe taxes in there somewhere? Like maybe every step of the way? Even if they valuations are way high (a Harbor Freight 'Blue Flame' welding helmet is worth $120?) it would seem you are just setting yourself up to get raped by the IRS when you overvalue the items to make 'good TV'.

The Fast-n-Loud guys never talk about how much the auction house gets of their sale.

If the auto restoration business is at all like antique clock resto, the people making money are working on other peoples stuff, not their own to restore and resell. People ask me all the time why I don't buy, fix and resell clocks and the answer is simple - 0 profit!!! I would end up reselling the clocks for much less margin than I would charge for the clock work, so I don't do it. Also, people (well, silly people anyway) sometimes think I should charge only a small amount because I 'love the work' or something like that. I like to eat and pay the rent too!

I know, by heresay anyway, of some very unethical goings-on with regards to some of the valuations on the Antique Roadshow in the past, so beware of what you believe on TV.

Best,
Rich
http://www.clockconservation.com

Originally Posted by Milacron

I didn't mention the storage unit thing since that is so obviously fake....

my sister buys storage units over there in the states and always turns a huge profit, she just knows how to pick them....but then she's the type that can actually "win" at three card monte.

My wife and me got addicted to "Wheeler Dealers". They have strange accounting methods. They'll travel to the USA to buy a car for $20,000, import it to the UK for $5,000 in shipping and taxes, spend $5,000 on parts and weeks of time to fix it up. Then they set the price at $35,000 and settle for $32,000 and claim a $2,000 'profit'.

I guess their time and other expenses don't count.

Originally Posted by ZAGNUT

my sister buys storage units over there in the states and always turns a huge profit, she just knows how to pick them....but then she's the type that can actually "win" at three card monte.

Unless the units she picks allow her to examine the entire contents of said units beforehand that makes no sense whatsoever. Not to mention-

1. As Metalmunchr said, even if behind on rent 95 percent of folks are going to remove anything of value before they give up the unit
2. I would think most owners of said unit complexes would tend to scope out anything of value themselves before an auction. Probably not legal, but I'll bet they do it anyway. I presume unit complex owners have to change the pad locks at some point.
3. Even if you do luck out with some halfway decent stuff, how do you actually sell it ? "Selling" labor and advertising can be a major profit eating aspect of the senario.

Having said all that, I vaguely recall a PM member claiming years ago to have bought a late model Hardinge HLV-H dirt cheap from a storage unit auction. But I imagine that sort of thing happens perhaps once a lifetime, if that. And even then probably only in some place like Silicon Valley, CA where there is so much money running rampant owners might "forget" about a storage unit they were renting and that $20,000 machine they put in there !

Milacron

Originally Posted by hlvhowner

My wife and me got addicted to "Wheeler Dealers". They have strange accounting methods. They'll travel to the USA to buy a car for $20,000, import it to the UK for $5,000 in shipping and taxes, spend $5,000 on parts and weeks of time to fix it up. Then they set the price at $35,000 and settle for $32,000 and claim a $2,000 'profit'.

I guess their time and other expenses don't count.

I haven't seen that show but your post gets at the heart of what my original post was about. I mean, sure the shows are fake, but why create the illusion of profits when any of us in real business know at those sort of figures they are really going in the hole ?

Milacron

but why create the illusion of profits when any of us in real business know at those sorts figures they are really going in the hole ?

Easy answer - the number of people who know about such things are very few in number. And the sponsors want average knuckle draggers because they're easy marks for whatever is being advertised.

But I do often wonder about the appraisals on Antiques Roadshow. I have long suspected that the producers encourage high evaluations to make the show more exciting. For the average K.D.

it's probable that they only show the "edited highlights" of a day or more's work. Certainly when one of our managers took some family heirlooms, including paintings by locally known artists, to one of the fairs where the UK antiques roadshow guys were present, they told him in no uncertain terms, that his stuff was essentially worthless. Needless to say, the plebs at work were amused by the tale.

Originally Posted by Admin5

Unless the units she picks allow her to examine the entire contents of said units beforehand that makes no sense whatsoever. Not to mention-

1. As Metalmunchr said, even if behind on rent 95 percent of folks are going to remove anything of value before they give up the unit
2. I would think most owners of said unit complexes would tend to scope out anything of value themselves before an auction. Probably not legal, but I'll bet they do it anyway. I presume unit complex owners have to change the pad locks at some point.
3. Even if you do luck out with some halfway decent stuff, how do you actually sell it ? "Selling" labor and advertising can be a major profit eating aspect of the senario.

Having said all that, I vaguely recall a PM member claiming years ago to have bought a late model Hardinge HLV-H dirt cheap from a storage unit auction. But I imagine that sort of thing happens perhaps once a lifetime, if that. And even then probably only in some place like Silicon Valley, CA where there is so much money running rampant owners might "forget" about a storage unit they were renting and that $20,000 machine they put in there !

Milacron

just looking in from the outside she knows when to buy and when not to. mostly sells through ebay. how much time it eats i do not know but it's pretty much just a hobby/addiction that she does in the little spare time she has while running her other real business. brings her upwards of $100k so i'm just going to assume she knows what she's doing.

Unless you're selling Clarke Gable's Dusenberg or Betty Grable's V-16 Cadillac, restoring an antique car for profit is a loser. I LOVE cars and restorations, but really...you do it out of enjoyment, love, history, many things, but profit is rarely one of them.

That show is sponsored and there are many people footing the unseen bills. $5k wouldn't cover a good paint job here in NJ.

One of the reasons I gave up with Hot Rod, Car Craft, and the rest of the car mags was I was tired of reading about "budget buildups" where the writers conveniently leave out the fact that the motor shops and body work was done by guys who wanted their businesses featured in the magazine. I would see paint jobs that should have been $8-10k getting billed at less than half that - no one is that stupid, their biz just got in Hot Rod..

Same with engine/trans/chassis work. A good street/strip engine build is going to be a minimum of $3-5k depending. And that's going real cheap and doing a lot yourself.

Besides, the "350 in a Nova" routine was really boring. Seen it so many times...

I restored a few cars, the last one I did was in 1995. If I figured the increase in value from the one I restored and kept and the profit off the 3 that were sold I averaged about $5-$6 an hour.

I worked in a high end restoration shop years ago that also bought and sold cars. The only time the boss ever bought a car to restore was if the restored value was way way over the cost all in. For example we went to buy an AC cobra and paid 100K for it in 1991. It took 80K to restore it and it was sold for 275K The money is good in that case but those are rare. 10 years ago customers were bringing in their GT 350 mustangs for ground up restoration. The bill was in the 200+ range on a car that at the height of the muscle car boom was worth 125K. So the customer was in the hole for better than 75 grand.

The muscle car sales always started with cars that were no worse than an A- A thorough detail top to bottom and the car would be turned around with no less than 20% profit. The value of the cars would go up and down like wall street. One month Camaros were hot, next month it's Chargers. Many regular clients would have collections of 10-30 cars. They would call wanting a silver Chevelle and knew they were tired of the plum crazy Cuda' they had and wanted to trade. The sales guy had enough contacts that there would likely be someone looking for a plum crazy Cuda' so there would be 2 deals in one. Many cars would come through the shop several times as it passed one owner to another. There was a blue Camaro, the shop bought it for 30K, and sold it for 50K. came back 6 months later for 40K and left again for 60 (round numbers) this happened several times over the years, always making a profit for the shop when it rolled out the door.

They also had a TV show that was very popular on Speed channel for many years. It is still being produced , but isn't on Speed. That show is real, but was very inexpensively produced. Everything was done in-house except for post production. The owner of the shop owns and produces the show. Total crew for the show consists of the 2 hosts, one camera guy and one lighting/everything else guy. Editing was done upstairs. For much of the in-shop work on the cars you would grab a camcorder and tripod and set it up and just let it run while you worked. The crew would later pick out good footage and voice over explaining what was going on. I am amazed how polished it all came out considering how things were done. Most of the guys in the shop were pretty camera shy and the few that would be asked to do a segment with the hosts had their deer in the headlights face on while talking.

I always thought the same....they have to be making the money on selling the show and not the picking or whatever else they were doing.

I read a post on a Harley list written by a credible -and long time- poster. He detailed his experience on the show American Pickers selling a motorcycle from his collection. Bottom line was that the purchase was all prearranged, price and all. It was the only thing they bought. They stayed an hour, talked, filmed the "purchase" and left. They drove a long way to get a Harley at a reasonable price.