This month, Via Bicycle turns 28 years old. That's 28 years of dealing with vintage bicycles and vintage parts. With the advent of the internet and Ebay, we are able to help so many more collectors than ever before. This summer will mark my 14th year at Via Bicycle. I love working there. I love my coworkers, diagnosing and fixing what other bicycle shops regard as "antiquated" bicycles and components. I love finding rare parts and finding them homes in the collector world. I love the collector world, all the personalities and histories and amazing stories.
This Valentine's Day, I ask Via Bicycle to be my Valentine.
It is sacrilegious to part out a complete bike in the collectors world. With that said, it 
is unspoken truth that it happens all too often for many reasons, but the main one being that generally the parts are worth more than the whole. Someone willing to spend $200 on a set of Campagnolo Nuovo Record wheels and $75 for a set of Stronglight cranks and $100 for Campagnolo Nuovo Record derailleurs and shifters, makes it hard to try to sell the complete bicycle for $500-$600. That still leaves many parts on the frame and the frame might then sell for a couple hundred dollars itself. This is the case with the Motobecane Le Champion bicycle seen here in the photograph. I have received offers of $300 for the complete bike, when it was listed on ebay, but have also received an offer of $200 alone for the wheels.I am keeping the bike together, as it is an example of a nice French road bike from the early 1970s. They are getting harder to find in this original state. I offered it on Ebay to no avail so I finally decided to just add it to the website for sale and hopefully there it will find a good home.
Next is the Rudge Pathfinder. Nice late 1950s-early 1960s bike. Paint and graphics are beautiful. Appears the frame was originally designed for a rear derailleur, as it has a braze on shifter boss and a gear cable stop on the chainstay. Currently it is set up with a Sturmey Archer SW 3 speed hub, which dates the wheel to 1957, as it was availible for one year. The bike looks as if it was never setup with the shifter and derailleur, on as a 3 speed bicycle. This beautiful bike is now looking for a loving home as well.
More pics of the Motobecane and full description of the bicycle can be found on the Bikeville website. Sorry for the shamless promotion, but just some my current thoughs.
Like all that you imagine, we have a tough time discarding anything as trash or 
rubbish. We are
I love the Bendix logo, and Campagnolo boxes were something of myth, as they were always top shelf(well maybe minus the Gran Turismo rear derailleur!).
Next is the headbadge to a Le Chemineau. Very cool one that resembles a town landmark milemarker. The bottom picture shows the Chemineau proprietary derailleur system. Also visible is the chainstay protector, Prior super large drilled out hubs, brake unit mounted under the chainstays, and the stays to the Lefol fenders, that actually have a rack built onto to them. I will have more detailed pictures in the future of this 650b bicycle and it's mate, a 700c model that we got 
together. the type that cannot even through away the packaging that parts come in. Looking back at some of the cool boxes we have and saving the graphics, it is great that we did it(and others before us), but still hard to justify shelf space for empty boxes when space is at a premium! I have seen some old bike parts boxes sell for the hundreds of dollars to collectors. Goes to prove that one man's junk is another man's treasure.
I have been asked many time upon seeing a High Wheeler "how does the rider get up there" and most times the inquiring mind has never seen one in person, let alone someone actually riding one. Without seeing one, you miss the subtle detail of the mounting peg on the lower part of the backbone(frame) of the bike. That mounting peg serves as a the first step in getting atop the bicycle.
The bicycle used in the demonstration is a Columbia Standard from 
1884. It is had recently been tuned and includes high quality reproduction Columbia pedals and a recovered leather saddle.
At first, the rider places one foot on the mounting peg. Then holding the handlebars, he pushes off with his other foot to get the bicycle moving. Once in motion, he then pulls himself up onto the saddle, and puts his foot he pushed off from on the ground onto the pedal. The other foot follows onto 
the other pedal, and then he is riding a high wheeler.
Once up there, it is not much different than riding any other fixed gear bicycle, except for you are a couple feet higher, and knowing that the trip to the ground will be a lot harder!
I am not good at taking photographs at bicycle swap meets as I am too busy shopping and talking it up to many of the sellers and fellow bicycle collectors. It is a fault of mine that I like to buy super awesome stuff and then offer it to waiting recipients at home. Sometime fellow collectors joke how I buy all the cool stuff and leave nothing for them but I do not haggle or complain about price, I either accept it or walk away. If the seller wants to deal, I then deal, but I am not out to rob people, I want both parties to feel like we got a deal, and everyone is happy.
Some swap meets are better than other for us. We turned up a few odds and ends- a Lytaloy cottered aluminum crankset, set of early Campagnolo Nuovo Record brake calipers, and early 1980s Jack Taylor road bike, but over all, nothing that I was super stoked about. I mean to say, all the parts 
were super awesome finds and will find great homes(some already have) but I guess I always hope for more, superer-coolerer stuff. But in the end, it was an great day chatting it up with fellow collecters, fellow Classic Rendezvous-ers, and looking at interesting bits and bobs.
The photos are some of the cool items for sale, some awesome deals, and some rare parts for sure. Some items seen in the pictures are -Harden "Bacon Slicer" hubsAirlite track hubsCampagnolo track hubs
box full of various track cogs
Cinelli steel track bars & steman array of Pantographed Cinelli stems,-Colnago, Merckx, Motta, De Rosa, etc.
3Rensho
Cinelli with full Super Recordand that is all i got to photograph!!
Use your imagination on what you didn't see!
A week or so ago, I discussed a rack of bikes up on the third floor of the shop and stating one bike as having something to do with Alvin Drysdale. That was inaccurate. The bicycle has a Pop Brennan Shop decal on the headtube, not Alvin Drysdale. I still have no idea who actually made it, and I have not had the time to properly look it over, but it not like any Brennan that I have ever seen, and could have just been something sold through his shop. It appears to be early, but i have to really photograph and get a closer look at frame details to properly identify(or at least try to identify) and maker.
Sorry for any confusion. The bike in question can be seen below(it is the top black frame in the photo)-
The wild world of bicycle collecting, as with all collecting, there is a group of people that are the sellers. Sure there are tons of people that sell items, but their is a dedicated group of collectors out there that make a living finding and selling rare and outdated parts. That group is usually small and everyone knows each other and know what they have and are usually envious of the next guy's pile of stuff. It is the classic case that the grass is always greener on the other side.
We are in that group of sellers. We travel anywhere and everywhere trying to find the newest undiscovered cache of parts/bicycles. We love swapping stories with other sellers the tales of the elusive basement find of new old stock parts, or the gem of a barn fresh unrestored classic. It seemed years ago, the stories were more abundant. That is not to say cool things are not showing up, being discovered, because they are. It is that we must chase down every lead and travel a lot further to come across the parts.
Sellers are a big part of the collecting world as we are the ones that make it possible for restorations to get completed. From simple things as locating brakes and hardware, to doing the research in our vast inventory of catalogs to accurately help collectors complete their projects. Sellers are usually collectors as well and use selling of duplicate or unwanted parts/bicycles to fund bikes they want in their collection. We have some super awesome bicycles in our collection and that is only possible by selling off ones that we no longer want.
I love being able to facilitate a restoration- for someone to ask me for some part they thought they would never find, and we happen to have it. Nothing is more rewarding than that as a seller of rare parts.
