CALGARY’S OWN CANADIAN PICKERS TAKE TREASURE HUNT TO UNITED KINGDOM
New season finds Calgary antique dealers mobbed by ‘Cash Cowboys’ fans in U.K.
Scott Cozens and Sheldon Smithens do not need a new reason to bicker about their respective driving skills.
For three seasons now, viewers have watched the amiable Calgary antique dealers and stars of History’s Canadian Pickers interrupt their cross-country bargain-hunting to argue about who the better driver is.
It was actually a theme in one episode of Season 3. Entitled, Drive To Win, it showed the boys rolling through central Saskatchewan quibbling over their motoring skills and climaxed with a “showdown at a hotrod repair shop.”
So after learning that Smithens and Cozens have expanded their horizons for the fourth season of Canadian Pickers and ventured into the United Kingdom, it seems natural to ask who was best at negotiating England’s narrow roadways.
“Sheldon wouldn’t drive,” Cozens says, in a joint interview with his picking partner.
“I was afraid to drive and I was afraid to be a passenger, quite frankly,” Smithens adds. “There were times when Scott would say, ‘Where am I on the road?’ and we’re hitting shrubs and trees on my side. It was scary is what it was.”
“As much as Sheldon likes to complain about my driving, I got us everywhere we needed to go, didn’t hit anything,” insists Cozens.
“In fact, a couple of the English people who were with us were amazed that at one point in time I went at full speed through a back alley with half-an-inch to spare on either window.”
Yes, part way through Season 4, Cozens and Smithens will temporarily shift operations to the U.K., where drivers drive on the wrong side of the road, the toilet is called the loo, elevators are called lifts and our beloved homegrown pickers are exotically known as “The Cash Cowboys.”
In fact, the series has been airing under that moniker in the U.K. for nearly as long as it has here. So British viewers certainly know who they are and what they do.
Meanwhile, thanks to their long tenures in antique dealing in Calgary, Cozens and Smithens have had plenty of experience with British items and knowledge of British history.
But, like all seasoned, spoiler-wary TV personalities, they are not about to fully divulge what led them to temporarily abandon the colonies in search of treasures in the motherland.
“It has a Canadian connection,” Cozens says. “There’s a deal we’ve been working on for more than a decade that has to do with merchandise that we knew was in England and had been in a barn for a hundred years. It had gone up for auction a quarter-century ago or so and then it disappeared. We’ve been working on trying to get that for quite a period of time.”
While that may have drawn them there, the boys figured to make the most of the trip to England. They cover most of the country and journey into Wales, encountering a wide spectrum of characters and treasures. They go from a strange, centuries-old manor house with machine guns on the wall to a “boot sale” in rural England, where vendors set up in a field with various goods to haggle and trade. They go to large warehouses owned by a “marine wholesaler” who has disassembled ships from India and Pakistan and visit the quaint Welsh village where the 1960s cult series The Prisoner was filmed.
“I found people in the antique trades are the same everywhere,” Cozens says. “I think the one difference about England is that they’ve been at it so much longer that they are more attuned to the process of negotiation than Canadians are. No one gets offended if you give them a lowball offer.”
That said, Season 4 — which begins Monday on History — will largely remain a homegrown operation, with Cozens and Smithens scouring new territories in Northern Ontario, Northern B.C., New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Alberta, among other spots.
Along the way, there will be a touching ceremony at the Cote Indian Reservation where an item the pickers found in their Season 3 travels will be repatriated.
They will be put to work by Alberta country star George Canyon, who enlists Cozens and Smithens for help finding some cowboy items.
Rare Canadiana will be uncovered in a cluttered house in Ottawa and Cozens will be tempted by a $30,000 Easy Rider motorcycle.
Meanwhile, back in Calgary, the two have a new warehouse man- ager to replace last season’s young recruit Keenan Feeney, who often served as unintentional comic relief on the series. He wasn’t fired, but is furthering his career in mixed martial arts and boxing in Las Vegas.
“Let me just say this, Keenan is not quite as dim as they made him out to be,” Cozens says. “But he’s much better suited for the ring than our facility,” Smithens adds.
But while picking may not seem as exciting or competitive as prize fighting, it is certainly attracting more and more people. After three years on the air, Smithens and Cozens regularly hear from fans on a regular basis who have been inspired to get into the business.
In England, they met their “biggest fans” who had quit their jobs to become professional pickers.
“We were their inspiration,” Smithens says with a laugh.
“We hear it every which way you can imagine,” adds Cozens. “We hear it from people who are excited about the fact they have now decided they want to either do this for a living or for a hobby where they can make money. We get our buddies to slap us around and say, ‘All you’ve done is increase the prices of everything we want to buy!’ We get the good, the bad and the ugly.”
I found people in the antique trades are the same everywhere SCOTT COZENS