Pedal Pushers
Seeing a bike you had from childhood can be like seeing an old friend.
Maybe it was a super cool 1949 Schwinn Black Phantom, with its shiny chrome and white-walled wheels, that made you feel like a hotshot when you rode it to school. Maybe it was a 1960s’ Peugeot PX-1 racer that swept you to a few victories. Or perhaps it was a 1974 Schwinn Fair-Lady you pedaled to the park with your friends, a picnic lunch tucked in the basket.
Bicycles roll out nostalgia, and many people who collect antique and vintage models are now grown-up kids who long for what they once had or always wanted. These bikes are valued for emotional reasons as much as monetary ones, and point to a market segment that has a high degree of interest in buying their past.
Nostalgia isn’t the only factor, though. Antique and vintage bicycles are enthusiastically collected for a variety of reasons: Collectors also appreciate their history, heritage, and artistic designs. Whatever the reason, collectors are spending big bucks to buy original, restored and reproduced bicycles that lack any of the high-tech innovations of modern ones, but pack a lot of old-fashioned charm.
Perhaps no one knows the hearts of bicycle collectors better than Mike Fallon. His love of bikes and the people who collect them have propelled his auction house, Copake Auction, to having one of the most popular and well-respected antique bicycle auctions in the world for the past 30 years.
“I am considered a real expert on bicycles, but I’m not. I am a merchant who loves bicycles, but I
