American Pickers' Frank Fritz Once Spent $90 For A 1930s Toy Car

It can be easy in our modern world of gizmos and whatnots to forget that there was a simpler time. A time when toy cars were just wads of metal with a high lead content and a passing similarity to functioning vehicles. They wouldn't write you a ChatGPT or smartphone your TikToks. You just put them on a table or the floor and played with them. If you were lucky, they might roll, but that was a "maybe" at best. It was, as we say, a simpler time.

And Frank Fritz had a hankering to return to that time — a mean hankering, at that — during the events of the "American Pickers" season 14 episode "Can't Catch a Break." In the home of an elderly, polo-shirted collector named Howard with a solid sense of his possessions' value, Fritz spotted a toy car dating back to the 1930s. Fritz wanted that car. He wanted it bad.

The toy car wasn't much to look at, brushing up against a century old and rusting like a relic from days gone by. But that didn't matter to Fritz, who had his heart set on it. "It's got 'Plymouth' on the side," he explained. Bidding started at $75.

The owner of the toy car was unimpressed by Frank Fritz's lowball bid. "No, no," he growled. "$100." "How about $80?" Fritz retorted, eliciting a sad shake of the head and a sense of disappointment from a member of the Greatest Generation.

"It's an iron toy, and it's old," the toy car's owner explained. "It's probably from the '30s, and it has 'Plymouth' on it. I'm sure it's very desirable."

It certainly was to at least one person: Frank Fritz, who grumbled and retreated when a firm price of $90 was put on the object. After a few minutes of contemplation and nearing time to leave, he acquiesced to the demands set forth. "Howard," he relented, "would you still do the $90?" "I guess," replied a reluctant Howard, and the co-host of "American Pickers" traded the better part of $100 to take home a tiny, canary yellow, iron facsimile of a car.