Rob Wolfe is ready to step out from his brother's 'Pickers' shadow, create his own legacy

The local junkyard was Rob Wolfe’s personal Shangri-la.

As a kid, he and his younger brother Mike ― creator and still star of the mega-hit reality show “American Pickers” ― could lose themselves for hours in the acres of discarded parts and dilapidated tools all ripe to be retrofitted and patched and put back on the road.

For kids who found value in working with their hands, man, those lots were magical, he says by way of emphasis.

But, maybe more importantly, those fields were also their first taste of the power of stories embedded in objects. They’d crawl into a rusted-out pickup, find a newspaper in the car, yellowed and worn from decades of exposure, and get lost wondering who the owner was, where he went and what befell him that landed his vehicle here, in this condition.

In hindsight, Rob says, those hours were where the kernel of “American Pickers” was planted. Junkyards, not books or experts or auction houses, were where the Wolfe brothers honed their ability to see gems where others see junk ― and their power to bring history alive in the odds and ends of average people.

Every doohickey and thingamabob has a narrative ― of a town or a family or a moment, Rob says.

Superfans will know Rob as a sidekick to the formerly main duo, Mike and Frank Fritz, going all the way back to the first episode, which featured his five kids, he says with pride.

When Fritz went through a public falling out with co-host Mike about three years ago ― the details of which were covered breathlessly in tabloids ― and then had a stroke that prevents him from returning on-air, Rob was promoted to full-time road warrior and picking partner. The casting change was mostly seamless for TV viewers, but caused consternation among fans who took to online forums to complain that the show had lost some of its magic, an alchemy unique to the original hosts.

“My brother taught me well: Don't pay attention to any of that," Rob says. "It's always gonna be there. You're always gonna have somebody out there that's gonna be a hater.

“Look at it this way: Out of every 10 people, you might have one person that's a hater and nine that love it. So don't focus on that one person. Focus on the good.”

And listen, he’s a poor kid raised by a single mother who went on to nurture an uber-successful landscaping business for over 35 years while being a successful picker on the side. More importantly, he’s a dad to five kids, all grown and out on their own. He’s done well financially and prestigiously.

“Pickers” is a second act, a fun one, and one that he hopes will help him cement a legacy.

So not only will he continue to inspire viewers to share and preserve everyday history on his weekly show ― Season 25 premieres Dec. 27 on History Channel ― but he’s also starting an educational foundation, Bettendorf Americana, that will support scholarships for kids hoping to go to trade school.

He’s seen how much schools push college and he knows, deeply, sometimes that isn’t for everyone. It wasn’t for him.

“You could take a straight-D kid and show him, ‘Hey, you have value,’” Rob says, “if you take that kid and put a wrench in his hand.”

Rob’s not a billionaire, but he has the capacity to change some lives. “So,” he asks. “Why wouldn’t I?”

More: 'American Pickers' Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz reunite after 3-year separation

Bred to ‘pick’: Born into a mechanically inclined family

His great-grandfather’s house was covered with stuff he’d found, and brothers Rob and Mike would come alive among the piles. The Wolfe lineage was full of inventors, but the family was poor, so they were just as easily dismissed as hoarders or junkers.

“We had a single mom, and she worked her butt off to give us what we had,” Rob says. But “that’s where the picking came in. If I wanted a new bicycle, I had to find it for myself.”

Bathed in the neon lights of the antique signs that hang from rafters in his airy warehouse, just blocks from the Mississippi River, Rob says “picking,” basically another word for antique hunting, was bred into the Wolfe family.

“If I had a minibike and the engine went out, I couldn’t go buy a brand new one.”

No, he went to the junkyard instead.

Like Mike, Rob was mechanically inclined. He could break down nearly any gadget into its parts, study them and assemble it back together like new ― heck, upgraded even with a little streetwise knowledge.

Drop a broken lawnmower in front of him? A rumbling motorcycle? He wouldn’t stop until both were purring.

More: 'American Pickers' star Mike Wolfe is selling half his antique motorcycle collection

He was an A+ kid in shop class, but a straight-D kid in most other subjects.

“My mind did not want to be in school whatsoever,” he says, echoing his brother, who told the Register something similar a few years ago.

But Rob was unlike Mike in one important way: attitude. He wasn’t going to take insults or jabs from anyone, certainly not bullies. While Mike was getting picked on for being tall and lanky and quiet, Rob, well, was boisterous, for sure, and personable, like a guy building a Rolodex at 12.

So when Mike started picking seriously, he’d call Rob from pay phones or the hotel’s line: Hey, I'm in this barn in so and so! I’m in Missouri! I'm in the East Coast! Got anybody that can help me out?

Rob didn’t know what to think ― no one did ― when Mike called to say that show idea, the one he’d been filming with a digital camera while out on the road, was being picked up by the History Channel.

A ‘no-brainer’: How ― and why ― Rob Wolfe got prepared to come on ‘Pickers’ full time

By the time Mike got on the air, Rob had been a picker for decades, just as long as Mike. Picking was a passion that could bring in lots of money, sure, but with a family, Rob didn’t have the same luxuries as Mike to wade through the lean years.

But when he sold his business about eight years ago, Rob moved picking to the forefront. And he dove into the deep end, gaining knowledge about when to buy and, critically, when to sell like he was a hungry day trader just hitting Wall Street.

“The biggie is understanding what people are collecting, and that world evolves every day. It changes all the time,” Rob says. “If you're not part of that, you don't understand it.”

When COVID hit about three years ago, the antiques world ― collecting and restoring ― exploded, and that wave of interest has yet to recede, Rob says.

During lockdowns, people retreated to their attics, their basements and their garages, he says, and rehabbing whatever they found became a pandemic project like needlepoint or baking bread. Pair that new interest with the explosion of digital auctions ― not just from auction houses, but from amateur collectors on platforms like Facebook and Instagram ― and prices soared.

Even as we’ve ditched our masks and rejoined crowds, prices for antiques have yet to come down. This year, he offers as an example, a porcelain sign sold for about $1.5 million, a record and nearly a million more than the previous high.

“The antique world, from cars to signs to gas pumps to toys to everything, I call it the most volatile stock market that I've ever been in,” he says. “And if you don't pay attention to the stock market, it's gonna bite you.”

He tells people that want to get into collecting to never make purchases for the money ― or at least only for the money. Buy it because you like it, he says, “because you might get stuck with it for a while.”

Rob calls his ongoing interaction with the antiques world “a big plus” for “Pickers” credibility. He still travels to all the big important shows ― in addition to the travel he does for "Pickers," which is about 10 days on the road a month, working sunup to sundown.

And when he’s not deep in pick negotiations, he’s learning the particulars about a new area of antiques.

“I read more, a lot more. And I'm searching out information constantly, all the time,” he says.

“I definitely don't want to be the person that says I don't know where that came from, or I don't know anything about that,” he adds. “I feel like I failed myself at that point.”

All this studying meant he was well-prepared with knowhow as his brother asked him to be on the show more and more. And with each new exposure, Mike taught him the finer points of being on TV: What questions to ask to pull stories out of guests. Where to focus on a busy set. How to know what you’re touching in relation to the camera.

So when the chance to be on "Pickers” full time came around? A “no-brainer,” he says with a wide smile.

Grateful for an ‘incredible ride,’ he wants to shape the next generation

Most days, Rob finds his way to this warehouse, where he’s collected old advertising signs, toys, bicycles and cars ― some that “Pickers” fans would recognize. He works mostly with private buyers, but also museums filling out collections and restaurants looking for a certain aesthetic.

Recently, he’s concentrated on collecting photography because “once that stuff gets destroyed, it's gone forever and the history is gone with that.”

Paper, he says, isn’t likely to be discovered in a junkyard.

His license plate declares PICKER01, which he says is so people come up and tell him about the rust bucket they have in their backyard or the broken grandfather clock at grandma’s farm.

“I wake up every day wondering what the next piece is that’s going to walk in the door, what am I going to be chasing down that day?” Rob says.

“I'm constantly doing exactly what I feel that I should be doing: Saving these pieces.”

For Rob, legacy is about showing value in things that have been undervalued ― but not only just objects, careers and jobs. This new chapter, the “Pickers and beyond,” is about hyping the blue-collar worker.

“You can become a welder and make $250,000 a year. That's pretty damn good living in America,” he says. “You can become a guy that builds cars for a living. You can make a million dollars a year doing that if you're successful. But you got to get those kids in that mindset.”

You got to put a wrench in their hand.

The shape of his nonprofit Bettendorf Americana is still coming together. He’s organizing a board and planning an antique swap fundraiser for the first weekend of August. He’s got details to iron out, but his mission is clear: Share his success with a new generation.

“It's been a pretty incredible ride,” he says. “The people that weh've met, the things that I've been able to do.”

But don’t mistake his words; he’s not retiring. In fact, he doubles down: I'm gonna do this till the day I die.

Every day he wakes up and gets to come into Shangri-la — one of his own making.

Courtney Crowder, the Register's Iowa Columnist, traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. Reach her at ccrowder@dmreg.com or 515-284-8360.

Watch 'American Pickers'

The 25th season of "American Pickers" premieres at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 27, on the History Channel.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Rob Wolfe: Interview of 'American Pickers' host, replacing Frank Fritz