American Pickers

Posted on June 23, 2023June 29, 2023 by jim

Corinne mentioned the TV show American Pickers on the History Channel a few years back, and after watching an episode Colette thought it might be something we’d watch every now and then.
We’re not big on Reality TV, but it’s interesting to see the items they dig through, see a bit of Americana, and learn some interesting facts along the way.
We added an episode of American Pickers to our Friday night pizza and movie night routine in the cold Colorado winters, and have enjoyed the few seasons that we’ve finished so far.
Part of our travel planning is finding things along our routes to see, and I noticed Le Claire Iowa close enough to our route to be worth a detour. Le Claire is where Antique Archeology, the company that is the entire focus of the American Pickers show. This is also where there is the riverboat Twilight is that Don and Leone were interested in doing a dinner cruise on, so two things makes a must-stop.
On the TV show you don’t notice just how in-town the Antique Archeology shop is. It is dead smack in the middle of houses, behind the main street along the Mississippi that all of the other business in town are on. The film crew has done a good job of their camera work to make that part unnoticeable.
The main shop building is instantly recognizable from the show, but with more stuff accumulating and logo merchandise to sell – a modern building was added next door.
We enjoyed wandering through and looking at the interesting items, many of which we recognized from the show. The few things that had prices were so far out of a realistic price range for anybody to buy that we figure their entire business now is selling logo merchandise instead of selling antiques.
And good for them for pivoting – they estimate up to 1,000 visitors on a good day, most likely visitors that would never even stop in Le Claire if they hadn’t seen American Pickers. I’m sure some of the townspeople hated the extra commotion back when the show was being filmed and hate the additional traffic today, but since there is nothing else in this town they suck it up and deal with it.
For us – a cool and worthwhile stop. Another little bit of America experienced and we’ll have our eagle eyes on when we watch the remaining episodes in the series to see if we recognize any of the other goodies.