I thought there was a bit more candidness to it, personally, not that they pre-arranged the negotiations ahead of time or whatever. I fuigured a guy comes in with an item that the show wants to focus on they look it over, agree to do a deal, call in the expert, and then film the various stages of the whole thing as "candidly" as possible. But otherwist the explanation of the product and the negotioation is recorded, more or less, "live." It ruins things a touch to know there's a degree or two more of set-up in there.
But what annoys me more about the show are the various "antics" that occur (normally with Corey and Chumley). Like when Corey bought a hot-air balloon, it makes me wonder how much "production" played into that, did Rick really know about it and agreed to do all of this for the sake of the show?
What about when Chumlee went to get a record signed by Rod Stewart (or someone like that) and got it signed to him rather than just a generic signature (which, obviously, would be more sellable), was that a setup or did Chumlee really ruin a several-hundred dollar valued item and smiled broadly when he got to keep the record, oblivious to why Rick was mad?
That kind of more obviously manufactured stuff bugs me more as well as like the other random "odd things" that happen in the shop like when the computers went down, or testing Corey on his knowledge on items, or Chumle's ability to identify a faked etching, there's a lot more stuff that strikes me as more annoyingly manufactured.
