Local bargain hunters featured in History Channel’s ‘Downeast Dickering’

By Mike Lange
Staff Writer

    GUILFORD — When the owner of an unoccupied apartment building in Guilford was looking for someone to keep the roof shoveled during the winter, Clint Rohdin made him a deal.
    “I said I’d keep it clear if he let me have whatever’s left inside,” Rohdin said. Since the building is going to be demolished to make way for a Family Dollar store later this year, the owner agreed.

Observer photo/Mike Lange

    DOWNEAST DICKERING — Nate Knight, left, and Clint Rohdin take a break from salvaging items from an apartment building soon to be demolished in Guilford.

    So Rohdin and Nate Knight were busy last week pulling out anything usable from the building that can be sold for scrap, traded or part of a “dickering” agreement. “We’re going to make out all right on this one,” Rohdin said. “It doesn’t always happen that way.”
    But it apparently works often enough that Rohdin and two of his close acquaintances are now featured on the latest History Channel reality show “Downeast Dickering” – the art of bartering for goods and odd jobs where little or no cash is exchanged.
    The premier show, the first of eight scheduled episodes, aired Wednesday, April 2. “It must have been pretty good. The guys from ‘Pawn Stars’ were watching and tweeting about it,” Rohdin said with a laugh.
    So how did the History Channel discover Rohdin, best known as a house painter, roofer and handyman working out of his home in Sangerville? “They ran an ad in Uncle Henry’s last summer,” Rohdin said, “so I answered it just for fun. I told them all kinds of offbeat stuff, like I was a former Axe Man (another reality show on the History Channel).”
    Soon, however, Pilgrim Studios – the production company – was setting up camp at the Rohdin household and filming his “dickering deals.”
    While the experience was fun, Rohdin and Knight said it was also a lot of work. “We worked 60 hours the first week. Sometimes it takes hours of filming to get five minutes of finished product,” Rohdin said.
    Knight said that neither one of them realized how much work goes into a television production. “We were just getting comfortable with the routine when they finished up,” he said. “I watched the first show with a bunch of friends. It was almost like watching a video of your summer vacation,” he said with a laugh.
    Rohdin said that he was a little frustrated at first when some dickering deals didn’t make the final cut, like the time he salvaged a Subaru from a barn fire, got it running and entered it in a demolition derby. “But they (the producers) told me that if we didn’t see something we liked in the first episode, it may wind up in a show later,” he said.
    But aside from their unexpected fame, the trio will continue to do their dickering as usual. “When you dicker, you get stuff you want and people get rid of stuff they don’t want,” said Knight.
    Rohdin puts it another way. “A $100 bill doesn’t change value. But something you may pick up for practically nothing may be valuable to somebody else. That’s the beauty of it,” he said.
    Plus, Rohdin added, “I’m getting too old to climb roofs. But I’m never too old to dicker.”
    “Downeast Dickering” is broadcast on the History Channel on Wednesdays at 10 p.m.