Frank Fritz, a jocular Everyman who as one half of the duo behind the hit show “American Pickers” found ratings gold by unearthing fortunes in attics, basements and garage sales, died on Monday in Davenport, Iowa. He was 58.
His manager, Bill Stankey, confirmed the death, in a hospice. He said that the cause had not been announced, but that Mr. Fritz had been dealing with a number of health issues, including Crohn’s disease and the effects of a stroke in 2022.
Debuting on the History Channel in 2010, “American Pickers,” which Mr. Fritz hosted with his longtime friend Mike Wolfe, was part of a wave of reality TV shows that mined everyday Americana for stories, profit and no small amount of drama.
Unlike older, more sedate shows like public television’s “Antiques Roadshow,” “American Pickers” blended serious appraisal with rough-edged personality and quirky flair.
Each episode featured Mr. Fritz and Mr. Wolfe tooling around a small American town in their Sprinter van, trading quips in between visits to local homes and storage sheds, where they would pick through piles of junk to find diamonds in the rough.
“We’re looking for people who don’t have a brand-new truck,” he told The New York Times in 2010. “People who don’t have a satellite dish.”
Fans ate it up. By its fifth episode, “American Pickers” was the second-most-watched show on the History Channel, with an average 3.3 million viewers, just behind another show cast from the same mold, “Pawn Stars.”
Though Mr. Fritz owned his own antique store, Frank Fritz Finds, in Savanna, Ill., along the Mississippi River, the show revolved around two stores owned by Mr. Wolfe, both called Antique Archaeology, one in Le Claire, Iowa, and the other in Nashville.
Mr. Fritz appeared on the show through most of the 2020 season, then went conspicuously absent. It was not until almost a year later that Mr. Wolfe and the History Channel announced he would not be returning.
In a 2022 interview with The U.S. Sun, the American edition of the British tabloid, Mr. Fritz said he left because of health problems — including alcoholism and debilitating back surgery — as well as a falling out with Mr. Wolfe.
“I haven’t talked to Mike in two years,” he told the newspaper. “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 two reconciled a year later, and there were rumors that Mr. Fritz might return to the show. But by then Mr. Wolfe’s brother, Robbie, had replaced him.
Frank Lee Fritz was born on Oct. 11, 1965, in Davenport to Bill and Sue Fritz. He attended school in nearby Bettendorf, where he met Mr. Wolfe in the eighth grade.
They bonded over their shared love of collecting anything and everything they came across.
He began with staple collectors’ items, he said in an interview for the History Channel, rattling off a list that included beer cans, stamps, coins and razor blades — “and it just escalated.”
In high school, he began collecting motorcycles, and eventually amassed a fleet of more than 100. He attended the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, an annual gathering of thousands of bikers in Sturgis, S.D., for more than 30 years straight.
After high school, Mr. Fritz worked as a fire and safety inspector in Davenport. He collected firefighting-related antiques and began selling them and other collectibles online.
A list of survivors was not immediately available.
In the mid-2000s, he reconnected with Mr. Wolfe, who had also come back around to collecting. They began driving around Iowa looking for finds, then posting videos of their adventures online. Mr. Wolfe spent five years pitching them as the basis for a reality show before the History Channel picked them up in 2009.
Mr. Fritz quickly found his role alongside the flashy, more charismatic Mr. Wolfe. Not quite the main player, but bigger than a sidekick, he was both the good cop and the truth teller, connecting with sellers while tamping down expectations of making a quick pile of money.
“You hear people say one man’s junk is another man’s treasure,” Mr. Fritz said in an appearance at a home show in Daytona, Fla., in 2013. “I’d say no, 99 percent of the time, one man’s junk is another man’s junk.”
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