Does anybody watch one of those many pawn shows?

[Links]

Sorta a minority viewpoint: these shows can be fun if you don't take them seriously. I have actually learned a fair amount about fairly esoteric subjects like rare books and old firearms from watching Pawn Stars. Never believed it was "reality," but hoped that whoever was researching the answers that the seemingly-omniscient store staff and their "experts" were giving on-air, was a real expert who knew his/her stuff. Same with the people to whom the Storage Wars buyers would take their purchases for appraisal. Even knowing that none of what you see is an actual representation of how business is done, one can pick up some useful information.

Hard-Core Pawn is another, worse thing. Three thoroughly unpleasant family members fighting with each other, when they're not staging confrontations with their (largely African-American) customers. Little information takeaway.

And I do like to juxtapose American Pickers with such horrorshows as Hoarders and Hoarding: Buried Alive. One show's charming eccentric collectors, are the other shows' self-destructive psychotic accumulators. Two different perspectives! What happens when Mike and Frank show up at the door of someone with 17 cat carcasses in the bedroom? Stay tuned…!

Allen, you hit the nail on the head. If you do not take them too seriously and enoy the entertainment, you can learn a lot - except on the bozo pawn show from Detroit, that you pointed out!

[Jordan Mong]

Did that Style-U seriously have a neck-through body?

[Barry Wilson]

Not sure if this has already been covered, but Jay Buckey (the same Jay Buckey who writes all the bluegrass mando, guitar, fiddle, etc. books) lives in the Ukraine where he has his harp guitars produced...

Come to think of it, THAT might make a good reality TV show.

I guess this means that there is still a market for them

Here's a link to his webpage:
http://jaybuckey.com/harp_guitar_for_sale.htm

The picture on that page definitely belongs in the women with mandolins thread!

wow great price for those

[catmandu2]

And for the mandolin player who has everything...