The history of objects is what is important

THE PICKERS know what they’re doing: they go to America’s back roads and pick through junk in the hopes of finding treasure. The television show, on the History channel, may lend more screen time to the boys – antique traders Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz – but while the boys are on the road, Danielle Colby holds down the fort at the shop, Antique Archaeology. While dealing with customers, she also sometimes gives the boys leads on great picks.

Covered in tattoos and sometimes sporting a look reminiscent of rockabilly fashions in the 1950s, Ms. Colby seems to be a tough chick with a touch of playfulness, but she takes her job seriously, and gives loving insight on the place of the objects she deals with in history. When is junk really just junk, and when is it treasure?

To her, it all boils down to a story.

“When you provide a history to that item, that becomes treasure. Otherwise, if it has no history to it, then it really decreases the value and people just look at it literally as junk,” she told ����ý during the entertainment convention HISTORY Con 2017 at the World Trade Center Manila which ran from Aug. 10 to 13. The people behind The Pickers, after all, work with a lot of people like hoarders, and as they sort through the piles of stuff in their homes and garages, the boys find something worthy to collect or sell. “Anything can be of historical value.”

“Not only does it tell the story, and that’s great for history… but it also adds value to the item when you can actually know the story behind it, because it strikes an emotional chord with people.”

For example, she points to her obsession with costumes from Burlesque acts of the past. “You find a costume… it’s pretty. It has beads on it, it sparkles, and it’s great. But once you actually delve into it, you find a name on the costume… you find the dancer, you talk to her, you talk to her family – most likely she’s passed away – and get a good sense of who that actually was, then you start to create this whole entire history around this piece, that otherwise, it’s just a piece of textile.”

While weaving stories around your grandmother’s purses and such might provoke sentimental value, does it always translate to real financial value? “They’re the same. When it comes to historical items, that’s what adds to the financial value.”

While the hoarders and collectors they talk to on the show might feel lucky about getting hundreds to thousands of dollars from what just sat in their homes, it’s nice to think that around our homes, we’d have valuable treasure lying around as well. When asked then, what things we should hold on to when we collect, she simply said: “You should hold on to what you love. The things that you love, you’re going to know more history about them.

“In order for something to retain its value, it has to be an item that’s really highly prized.”

In a chapter from The Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel, the author cited an interview by Francine Maroukian with designer Karim Rashid in a 2002 Town and Country article titled “What’s Really Important,” which was published just a few months after the 9/11 attacks in New York. “What really endures are artifacts, effigies, things that speak about a time, place, or civilization. When people say to me that everything seems trivial or meaningless, I believe the opposite. Objects outlive us, and they are the symbols of our culture and history,” said Mr. Rashid.

Ms. Colby said: “I visited the museum in New York. They had this installation that was just 9/11. And it was literally just like, a shoe, and a scrap of metal from a building, and like, a water bottle.” Discarded detritus, and without knowing the story, the items seem just like random pieces of junk. “And then you read the story, and it pulls you in, and it made you understand what was happening at that time.” – Joseph L. Garcia