Story #14: Vintage Bike Collector

When the storage door rolled up, I was met with a wall of tangled metal—an 8x10 unit completely filled with rusty bicycles stacked on top of each other. It was less like opening a locker and more like peering into a junkyard. Handlebars stuck out at odd angles, chains dangled loosely, and fenders overlapped in every direction. 

The unit presented a few challenges—such as how to transport the bikes, especially the two-seaters. But for me it looked like fun, as I knew I would enjoy disassembling the bikes if necessary, and selling them piecemeal. Inside the tangle I found rare models of Schwinns (Jaguar and Tiger), two huge tandem two-seater bikes, and other obscure vintage models, such as a Kumda Korean import, a UK-import all-steel Raleigh, a Columbia two-seater, an Alenax push-pedal bike, a Ross racer, and a mix of custom models and more common Schwinn cruisers.

What I realized, as I educated myself on the vintage bicycle industry, is that it is full of enthusiastic collectors, restorers, and resellers. Rare parts are difficult to come by. Vintage bikes are rare, and are even called “survivors” in collectors’ lingo. My locker probably came from one of those die-hard collectors. This person had clearly been collecting for years, assembling a meticulous timeline of brands and eras. Yet, the bikes were rusty, and had probably been stored outside before arriving in the unit. What’s worse, the collector lost the unit due to non-payment.

Looking at the heap of tangled frames, it reminded me of modern art sculptures I had seen in museums—chaotic yet admired for their artistic complexity. As I looked at these bikes, I thought to myself that rust could have its own beauty, and neglect would be seen through a prism of poetry. The bikes were no longer vehicles, but fossils of one collector’s ambition, vestiges of journeys this person never took. Sometimes the lesson from my lockers is not about what can be salvaged, but about learning to see beauty in objects that are long surrendered to time, carrying within themselves stories of people’s dreams once vivid and alive.