American Pickers' Frank Paid Way More Than He Wanted To For This Vintage Coin Slot Game

Part of being a good picker on History's "American Pickers" involves being a shrewd negotiator. When the team finally comes across an item they like, the goal is to turn around and resell it. No matter how sentimental they are towards a given piece, they have to go into the mindset of a businessperson. And even though an item may have been sitting around in someone's garage for 20 years, that doesn't mean they're willing to let it go without a fight. 

Both Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz have gone toe-to-toe with some pretty skilled negotiators over the years. Fortunately, the two are pretty good about knowing the value of given items and explaining why they can only pay a certain amount. While they can often talk people down from their original asking price, there are times when sellers have stuck to their guns, forcing the pickers to pay more than they would like to get their hands on valuable merchandise.

During a random stop in the Season 13 episode "Red, White, and Blues," Frank Fritz stumbles upon a penny-operated game. Basically, how the game works is that the player puts a penny into the slot and flips the little device. This sends a marble moving through it, and the goal is to get the highest score possible. It's a neat little piece that would ordinarily go in a bar or something, and Fritz wants to make a deal on it. 

The seller offers $200, and Fritz immediately goes down to a "buck and a half." Unfortunately for Fritz, the seller's unwilling to budge in the slightest. He sticks to his guns and remains at $200, so it becomes clear that Fritz is going to have to come up a little if he wants to get his hands on the machine. Despite the water damage, Fritz must see some value in the device and comes up to $200. 

There were a lot of cool items on display, from pinball machines to slot machines, but that penny device caught Fritz's eye the most. He must've seen something special in it to pay more than he intended.