“American Pickers” Co-Stars Haven’t Spoken In Two Years
on Jul 20, 2021 • Updated Oct 12, 2022
In 2010, History channel premiered a show called American Pickers. The show began following two antique and collectible “pickers” named Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz, who travel around the United States to buy or “pick” various items. They then resell the items for either their personal collections or for clients.
For ten years, the two men have taken their finds to different storefronts Fitz’s store is in Savanna, Illinois and is called Frank Fritz Finds. Wolfe has two locations of his Antique Archaeology stores in Le Claire, Iowa and Nashville, Tennessee. There have been 22 seasons of the show with 325 episodes, but recently, fans have noticed that Fritz hasn’t appeared on the show since March 2020 even though his image was still being used for marketing for months.
Lets make the best of our Monday night with the Best of American PIckers 9/8c on HISTORY pic.twitter.com/Q5OqM1sJGT
— American Pickers (@americanpickers) March 23, 2020
Fritz is revealing all in a new interview with The Sun. He also debuted a 65-pound weight loss.
American Pickers' Frank drops 65 lbs as he resurfaces for first time in a year https://t.co/Y9VGZnelhj
— The Sun TV (@TheSunTV) July 19, 2021
In the interview, he revealed that he first was taking time off the show to have back surgery and then the pandemic hit.
“It’s up to the network whether I come back on the show. It ain’t gonna affect me one bit. I didn’t leave the show, I finished shooting and then I had a little back surgery and the pandemic came,” he said in the interview.
Fritz added that after the surgery, Wolfe never contacted him to find out how he was doing…and they haven’t spoken since, making it about two years since they’ve talked!
He revealed, “I haven’t talked to Mike in two years. He knew my back was messed up, but he didn’t call me up and ask how I was doing. That’s just how it is. The show is tilted towards him 1,000 percent. I can’t even bend that far down to show you how much. That’s fine. It’s like you’ve got Aerosmith and there’s Steven Tyler and he’s the front man. I found my spot, I’m second and he’s number one on the show. That’s no problem with me, maybe he does have a problem.”
And while Mike has claimed in the media that Frank’s absence is because of his back surgery, Frank reassured The Sun that he is back to full physical health.
“My back is doing perfect. I had a couple of rods put in there. It was from lifting stuff all the time,” he said. “If you watch the show you can see who the guy is that’s lifting all the time, it’s always me. It had been hurting for a long, long time. I’m talking months and months and months.”
From the new previews, it looks like Wolfe has a rotating cast of “sidekicks,” one being his brother Robbie, like Fritz had mentioned in the interview.
