Anyone who has ever had to clean out a family house will attest to how much random stuff assembles over time. While the majority of stuff can typically be turfed, most people are unaware that some valuable items in there will catch Mike Wolfe’s attention and cause him to pull up in your yard. One of the primary characters in “American Pickers” and the brain behind the operation is Mike. Based on the popularity of his shops, Mike’s show Antique Archaeology depicts the essentially nomadic lifestyle of a picker as he traverses the country looking for lost treasures. Mike is a successful businessman and reality TV personality, in addition to being a devoted husband and father who gave his wife the support she needed while battling illness.
Childhood And Family
Mike Wolfe (Pinterest)Mike Wolfe, the middle child of three with a brother named Robbie and a sister named Beth, was born on June 11, 1964, in Joliet, Illinois, in the United States. Due to their parent’s divorce when they were still very young, Mike and his siblings have never revealed who their biological father is. They were raised by Rita Wolfe as an only child, who instilled in them all the ideals they uphold today. Mike began rummaging through the trash as a young child and seemed to know what to do almost instinctively. When he was growing up, the Wolfe family could not buy many things because of their financial situation. Mike got his first taste of independence when he rescued a banana-seat bike from his neighbor’s yard. This purchase also marked the beginning of Wolfe’s lifetime enthusiasm for restoration and picking.
Education
Mike Wolfe had difficulty during his academic years. It would take him many readings of a page to get the content because he could hardly concentrate on his textbooks. Nevertheless, Mike persevered and graduated from Bettendorf in 1982, albeit in last place in his class. Mike spent some time hopping around between community institutions, but he just wasn’t interested. He decided to pursue his career after realizing that academics was not where his passion lay.
Career
Bikes And Odd Jobs Salesman
While working as a courier for a while in Chicago, Mike discovered that his relationships were suffering due to the continual travel. His sole qualifications when he applied for a position at Hike ‘n’ Bike in 1987 were his love of bicycles and his experience fixing them as a young man.
Mike would assemble up to 13 bikes a day while earning $7 an hour. His manager even remarked on his effectiveness on the show floor as he developed into a pro at selling motorcycles. When his supervisor showed him his collection, it was at this employment that he first got a sight of classic bikes.
Wolfe was mesmerized by the motorcyclists’ sleek beauty and knew he had to have one of his own. To that end, he created fliers, distributed them widely, and started purchasing motorcycles for anywhere between $25 and $100. Although this would seem like an odd hobby for a man living off his paycheck, after restoring the motorcycles, he was able to sell them for up to $5,000, which was much more than he had been making while putting them together.
Racing
Mike was always going to be drawn to racing because of his sizable collection of repaired motorcycles. Mike dedicated himself to biking for nine years, from 1989 to 1998, competing in cat4 and cat3 events. He brags that he finished in the top five in every race and that he has won the state time trial championship for the cat.4 division once. However, his obligations as the proprietor of a bike shop grew more and more demanding, and racing eventually took a back seat.
Bicycle Shop
In 1993, when Mike was 29 years old and employed as a sales representative, he called a store only to learn that it was a bike store that was on sale.
Mike Wolfe realized this was his chance, so he sold his beloved 1934 Harley-Davidson and used every last penny he had to buy the shop. Mike stated to Bicycling that “I did $150 the first day and took the store from 75 bikes a year to 500 bikes a year in the first year,” after which his success was exponential. Mountain bikes began to gain popularity around that time. I had the biggest Manitou dealer network in the nation. It was crazy. We opened a second location in East Davenport since the business was booming there.
It wasn’t all roses, though; after years of running the businesses, a fire started in the store above him and spread to his shop, igniting it.
In addition, the prior owner of the business had thoroughly misled and mislead him over the store’s insurance, and it would take him years to receive a dime from the insurance provider. The second shop was still in decent shape, but the wind was knocked out from under him, leaving him broke and at a loss.
Early Archaeology
Mike found E-bay when his bike business was nearly bankrupt. The concept sparked his imagination, and before long he had created a website and started traveling in a cargo van. As a result, his pick-up shop, Antique Archaeology, opened in 2000. After the success of his first storefront in Iowa and his appearance on reality television, he launched a second store in Nashville, Tennessee.
Watch “American Pickers”
Mike Wolfe was acutely aware of the unusual turn his life had taken and understood that what he was doing would make a fantastic reality program. However, after presenting the concept to several businesses, it became incredibly likely that such a show would never be produced. Eventually, History Channel recognized the gambit’s potential and chose to produce the show, which debuted on January 18, 2010, and continues to this day.
The fact that the show is centered on Mike Wolfe and Antique Archaeology, or as Mike puts it, “basically a profile of my life — about me,” does not mean that it is without personality or characters.
Together with Frank Fritz, a fellow selecting store owner and high school acquaintance, Mike travels across America. Danielle Colby, an intriguing individual in her way, is in charge of man, or more accurately, womaning, the administration fort, and gathering information at their base.
Author
Wolfe went on to write two books about picking after discovering the appeal it held for the general public and how it had shaped his boyhood. In 2011, he published his first book, “American Pickers Guide to Picking,” and in 2013, he co-wrote “Kid Pickers: How to Turn Trash into Treasure,” which made the topic approachable to readers of all ages.
Individual Life
Family
Long before he became famous, Mike Wolfe first met Jodi Facts in 1994. Even though Jodi already had a son named Kyle from a previous union, Mike was unfazed. Jodi recalls how Mike frequently pretended to be a date and took her out on pick-ups. Nevertheless, they started dating seriously and fell in love. Their daughter Charlie was born on January 18, 2012, and this catalyzed for them to get married on September 8, 2012, later that same year. Despite rumors to the contrary, Mike is still alive and well.
Health Issues
The Wolfe family has not always had it easy. Charlie, their daughter, was born with a cleft palate, which needs to be repaired surgically.
Fortunately, the issue was successfully resolved following two facial reconstruction procedures, and the young girl is now very content.
After the medical drama, Jadi received a stage two Non-Lymphoma Hodgkin’s in 2013. To the family’s great delight, she survived cancer following a series of both surgery and treatment, which the physicians started right away.
Body Structure
Mike Wolfe (Pinterest)Mike Wolfe has a slender physique and a wide smile, but his face never stops looking as though he might start laughing at any moment. He has dark brown eyes and graying hair that is parted down the center. Mike is roughly 150 lbs. and 6 ft. (1.83 m) tall (70kgs).
Salary and Net Worth
Mike Wolfe transformed his life from having nothing to having a virtual empire in the picking industry by lifting himself by the bootstraps. He can live a life far distant from his modest beginnings thanks to his two prosperous stores and the cash from the hugely successful “American Pickers.” Mike has a remarkable net worth of $5 million as of the middle of 2020.