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Now that’s what I call reality

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Market Warriors cast

Who’s ready to lose some money?

Lately we’ve been watching a PBS show called Market Warriors, which ostensibly involves four antiques experts going around to flea markets and buying stuff cheap to sell at auction for major profit. I use the word “ostensibly” here because in practice it works the other way around: The experts nearly always pay too much, and end up getting hosed at auction time.

I guess that’s one of the charms of the show. I can relate. I can’t dance with the stars or bring Simon Cowell to his feet with my rendition of “I Will Always Love You,” but I can damned sure lose money with the best of them. We all have our areas of expertise; one of mine happens to be buying high and selling low. Until recently I never even deigned to haggle at rummage sales, thinking that if something was way overpriced, there must be a real good reason for it.

Have you seen this show? The producers have assigned arbitrary traits to the four cast members, possibly to aid in identification. There’s Kevin, “The Prowler”; John, “The Professor”; Bob, “The Designer”; and Miller, “The Assessor.” If I were on the show I suppose I’d be Dave, “The Sucker.”

Despite the clever monikers, they all work pretty much the same way. They ask how much something is, then offer half, then end up paying something on the low end of in-between. I’m worldly enough to know that having a full camera crew there has to intimidate the sellers — you’re really going to tell the criminally cute Miller to take a hike and lose your only shot to be on national TV? I don’t think so. But even with that advantage, the experts nearly always end up slack-jawed in wonder as something they paid $250 for commands $50 at auction. This is when I’m shouting at the TV: “Idiot! I told you that was a piece of crap!”

Anyway, check it out. It’s on Monday nights. It’s one of those rare reality show where reality hasn’t been produced right out of the picture.

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Comments

  1. John H. says

    How have I not seen this? My wife loves these kind of shows. Thanks for the tip.

    Regarding the nicknames, that seems to be a trend. They did the same thing for the participants in Storage Wars. I don’t see the point, though. The nicknames aren’t particularly apt, and anyway they only refer to them by their nicknames in the opening credits. Otherwise they just use their names.

  2. John H. says

    BTW, this sounds a bit like the BBC show Bargain Hunt, where two teams (each assisted by an “expert”) competed to buy stuff at a particular flea market or something, and then it was sold at auction. Often the “winning” team was the one that lost the lesser amount of money.

  4. Stock says

    I can one-up this madness. My Montana father-in-law just bought a Florida house for $60,000 being hawked on one of those TV shows for use as a rental property. If he had asked, I’d have been happy to unload one of mine that is only 100 miles away, rather than 2000! Hope I have more marbles when I am in my eighties.