As my Father told me long ago, things are only worth what People are willing to pay for them.
” things are only worth what People are willing to pay for them.”
Yep. Frankly, I wouldn’t pay a nickle for most of the stuff on that show, and neither would your average person. In this day and age, there’s no excuse for someone complaining about what those guys pay; it is dead easy to research and advertise stuff on the Internet, and they could charge the going rate doing so.
People don’t do that either because it’s too much hassle, or because they can’t sell their stuff that way. Middlemen exist for a reason; they somehow bring a buyer and a seller together who otherwise don’t connect. How they accomplish that varies; in this case, they accomplish it by spending a lot of time looking, and by reliably finding stuff buyers who’re willing to pay a premium for that finding want.
If a seller can connect directly with the buyer, then they should cut out the middleman and charge more. But if they’re going to sell to a middleman, that middleman is going to get some of the money from the final sale.
That said, I’ve love to see their books and compare their overhead before and after doing the show. I’m sure they didn’t travel as much or as far before doing it in front of a camera, but they undoubtedly put a lot of miles in.