American Pickers visit

[Gus The VW Bus]

This past summer we made our yearly trip back home to the midwest. I grew up in the Quad Cities, which are in Iowa and Illinois. Home of the John Deere headquarters, and not much else...until the show American Pickers started on the History Channel. I'll admit, I've really only seen one episode, but apparently one of the guys on the show is really into air-cooled Volkswagens. So since we were in town, and the actual "base" for the show is in LeClaire, Iowa in the Quad Cities, we decided to head on over to check it out.

The first thing we saw when we pulled up was this split window bus. I thought they might have found it on their Picker travels, but it turned out that the guy who worked behind the counter in the American Picker store (which is called Antique Archaeology) owns it, and it's his daily driver. I think he had recently moved from Oregon, which explains the plates.

Hey, the keys are in it! I kind of like the 8 Ball shifter.

Perhaps he lives in here.

Inside the store I found a few other VW items for sale.

This bus toy was cool, but was priced at $85. In general most of the items I saw in the store seemed to be very overpriced, almost like they didn't want to sell them.

Matchbox VW bus - very sweet. I don't know if it had a price on it.

Here's some of the other things in the store. It was a neat place to explore, until my son had a meltdown and we had to leave.

My son pre-meltdown with a cool old Harley.

I really wanted one of these, as it's the day I was born - July 20, 1969. But they were something outrageous, like $50 for one. So I settled for a free picture of them.

Cool vintage scooter.

The outside of the store, and the Dodge Sprinter they travel around in on the show. I didn't see any of the cast members when we were there, but I have friends who have run into them when they've been at the store. All in all it was a pretty cool place.

[Nate Woodcock]

always wanted to go there.  great show.

[stephen and Janet Leigh]

One of my favourite show's ,thanks for sharing ; )

[Michael H Slack]

Definately one of my TV fav's for sure...was really blown away when I found out Mike is a fellow 'dubber' and drives a single cab. As to their pricing? Lets just say watching them is more fun than probably paying them!