Paul Brown runs the Gallery 63 antiques consignment shop in Buckhead. He calls a particular genre of television “stuff” shows.
“American Pickers.” “Hardcore Pawn.” “Pawn Stars.” “Cajun Pawn Stars.” “Storage Wars.” “Storage Wars Texas.”
Over the past three years, they’ve infiltrated the basic cable universe, feeding a seemingly insatiable appetite for programs that focus on buying and selling second-hand goods. Brown himself is star of “Auction Kings,” which is starting its third season later this month on the Discovery channel.
But the granddaddy of “stuff” shows in the United States is Public Broadcasting Service’s “Antiques Roadshow,” which debuted in 1997, 18 years after the original British version launched and two years after eBay turned the entire world into a local flea market.
“Antiques Roadshow” visited Atlanta last August, only the second time the show has been here since 1997.
The chance to learn their “stuff” could be worth a fortune drew 6,000 people to the Georgia International Convention Center. They brought with them 12,000 items, which were appraised by one of 70 specialists. Only 100 items made it on camera. Those items were distilled into three hour-long episodes, which will air Monday, April 23 and April 30.
Robert Thompson, the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, said the appeal of the shows is universal.
“They’re so easy to slide into,” Thompson said. “It’s the opposite of [the HBO series] ‘The Wire.’ You can come home from a long day’s work and within seconds, you’re clued into what’s going on. They are dramatic in a fundamental way we can all understand. Who hasn’t dreamed of finding a first edition Walt Whitman at a garage sale or in grandma’s attic? It’s the magic of finding pirate treasure.”
“Antiques Roadshow” has stubbornly stuck to its original formula despite the arrival of competitors galore. They visit six cities a year. Each episode features appraisers assessing owners items, providing historical context and the eventual payoff: How much is said item worth? The show continues to be PBS’ most popular show, drawing around 10 million viewers a week.
Brown of Gallery 63 admires “Antiques Roadshow” and has watched it for years. “They’ve got a great format and have stayed true to it. It’s a little more scholarly. It’s PBS. We’re a little more pop culture.”
He doesn’t see the show as competition to his. Rather, “I feel a rising tide lifts all ships.”
Pamela Roberts, an executive producer for Georgia Public Broadcasting, shot a 30-minute special that will air after Monday’s episode titled “Antiques Roadshow Atlanta: Behind the Scenes.” She came away even more impressed with the well-oiled operation after seeing how PBS puts its together using 300 crew members and 100 volunteers.
“This is the originator and still the purest one. It’s the most authentic, too,” Roberts said. “They worked so hard to ensure people’s reactions are real when they find out how much something is worth. They didn’t even allow us to film in the green room, so we wouldn’t overhear anything.”
Some participants from last August’s taping showed up at GPB’s Midtown headquarters earlier this month for a special advance screening to see if they had made it on screen. Kathie Hicks Fuston, who drove in from Columbia, Tenn., was thrilled when she discovered she made the cut. She had brought two clocks created by woodworker Elmer O. Stennes in the 1970s.
Appraiser John Delaney added spice to the storyline by noting Stennes murdered his wife in 1968. He continued to make clocks in prison. He was paroled after two years and remarried. In 1975, Stennes himself was murdered.
Fuston, who grew up in Peachtree City, said she knew some of the clock maker’s background but was stunned by the sordid details. But she was thrilled to hear her clocks were worth a combined $11,000. Nonetheless, she decided she isn’t giving up the clocks, which hang in her antebellum home. They were part of a collection of 600 clocks inherited from her father-in-law Roy Fuston, who died in 2005.
“My father would have been ecstatic to know something he had purchased and enjoyed all those years was featured on ‘Antiques Roadshow,’” said Fuston’s husband, Steve. “He and my mom loved that show.”
“You didn’t talk when that show was on,” Kathie added. “You didn’t call. You didn’t drop by!”
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