Cycling UK Forum

Carlton green wrote: ↑12 Apr 2022, 9:41ambut I can see someone buying one as an appreciating investment.

I don't think there is much to rise in value, unless it is a show case special like a 753 team Raleigh untouched since it was built.

An example - I have a 1956 Higgins that probably cost me about £1200 to assemble once I tracked down the parts I wanted and the cost of a respray. I use it seldom and sometimes display it. If I wanted to sell it today, it would fetch about £600. Not much of an investment, but that is not why I wanted it.

tatanab wrote: ↑12 Apr 2022, 9:52am

Carlton green wrote: ↑12 Apr 2022, 9:41ambut I can see someone buying one as an appreciating investment.

I don't think there is much to rise in value, unless it is a show case special like a 753 team Raleigh untouched since it was built.

An example - I have a 1956 Higgins that probably cost me about £1200 to assemble once I tracked down the parts I wanted and the cost of a respray. I use it seldom and sometimes display it. If I wanted to sell it today, it would fetch about £600. Not much of an investment, but that is not why I wanted it.

Some ‘vintage’ cars and motorcycles have done well as investments and I believe that Raleigh Choppers go for silly money. Perhaps it’s now wealthy old men buying stuff that they couldn’t afford when they were younger.

As for the Higgins, well if you can afford it and get pleasure from it then the £1200 is money well spent. Someone could spend £1200 on a new bike and end up selling it for £600. To an extent beauty is in the eye of the beholder and when you’re finished with the bike you might well be happy to let another Higgins enthusiast have it for a reasonable price - to them it’ll be a classic.

...753 team Raleigh untouched since it was built.

That was my thinking behind the pic of Joop Zoetemelk's bike, although that had been well-ridden (in both senses.)

Once upon a time, the Campag groupset pretty much defined cycling perfection but Japanese R&D brought technical improvements like the freehub and marketing changes like making the latest thing obsolete before it was in the shops.

TrevA wrote: ↑10 Apr 2022, 11:10pm My son had an Angliru, a yellow and black one in about 2002, when they first came out. It was quite a heavy bike, came with a Campag Mirage groupset. He loved it, but I’d hardly call it a Classic. To me a Classic is something either old, rare or unusual, usually all 3. A Bates with Diadrant forks or a Curly Hetchins is a classic. A gas pipe job from 1975 isn’t, neither is a 20 year old heavy alloy bike with a low end groupset.

Interestingly, your view of a classic is the opposite of many others. Whereas they understand it to be something "typical of its time" you see it as something "rare or unusual". Which says more about the term than anything else.

I'll be harsh as I see the same conversation crop up on motorcycle sites and say the same thing. Motorcycling has a pre 65 class in many sporting activities. Seems a good idea as thats where certain things changed. Foreign motorcycles winning for one! I'll say that that is where the term classic finishes. With bikes I might suggest that pre integrated brake/gear levers is a good cut off. That doesn't make a much later bike without them classic though. so we are talking 80s at the latest. The 90's is not much more than old.
Of course it all comes from your base line. I call myself a middle aged cyclist. Joined the local club in 1980 so not exactly a long time ago. But not recent either. Thus classic comes from what was still cutting edge. A newcomer to the spot may see turn of the millenium as classic. Dream on!
I doubt that any MTB can be called classic although some might suggest that a new sport has different standards. So to me that would mean pre v brakes and suspension would wierd and wonderful experiments only.
Of course what we have is people wanting to call their pigs ear a silk purse hence Japanese motorcycles from the very late 1900's being called classic.

I remember a friend of mine restoring a Japanese motorcycle, I can't remember what, but it was 750cc and from about the 1980s, and he sought it out because it had been his unobtainable object of desire when he was younger. And maybe that is how each of us arrives at what we see as "classic". We desired it when we were young.

But I don't have any real passion for old bicycles. I view them with mild interest only. In my care they would get neglected so I leave them to folk who would treat them nicely.

mattsccm wrote: ↑12 Apr 2022, 9:46pm I'll be harsh as I see the same conversation crop up on motorcycle sites and say the same thing. Motorcycling has a pre 65 class in many sporting activities. Seems a good idea as thats where certain things changed. Foreign motorcycles winning for one! I'll say that that is where the term classic finishes. With bikes I might suggest that pre integrated brake/gear levers is a good cut off. That doesn't make a much later bike without them classic though. so we are talking 80s at the latest. The 90's is not much more than old.
Of course it all comes from your base line. I call myself a middle aged cyclist. Joined the local club in 1980 so not exactly a long time ago. But not recent either. Thus classic comes from what was still cutting edge. A newcomer to the spot may see turn of the millenium as classic. Dream on!
I doubt that any MTB can be called classic although some might suggest that a new sport has different standards. So to me that would mean pre v brakes and suspension would wierd and wonderful experiments only.
Of course what we have is people wanting to call their pigs ear a silk purse hence Japanese motorcycles from the very late 1900's being called classic.

Sorry to disabuse you, but that is a long time ago in the statistical sense that it is before most people's lifetimes in the UK. Median age being just over 40. It's easy to forget, when you're middle aged (perhaps that term is in some ways misleading), just how much of your lifetime is before most people's experience.

GideonReade wrote: ↑9 Apr 2022, 9:26pm
So what makes a bike "classic"?

No we don't turn up in tweeds. Or Rapha. I might have one top from the eighties (but it's not grey and pink, so you can't tell).

I'd be impressed if you had a Rapha top from the 1980's given that it was founded in 2004...
Although it's an interesting point because they have a "Classic" range which is summed up as all the basic items of clothing, fairly traditional cut, some sort of nod to the heritage of the sport...

What makes a bike classic I'd say depends more on the age of the rider. If you grew up watching the Tour in 1980's, then bikes of that era are probably "classic" as in "what was used at the time". But if you're only 20 now, then anything pre-2010 is likely to be regarded as old tech. There's a slightly blurred window of when a bike becomes "old" before it transitions to "retro" and then "classic".

For road bikes, I'd reckon on about 5-6 years old as being "old", then from about 8-12(ish) years old it becomes "retro" and beyond 15 it's "classic". From about 25 years on though, it just becomes ancient unless it really is something special!

I don't really think MTBs have the same pattern now though. Modern MTBs just go from new to old to obsolete. If there was a classic era for MTBs it was late 80's to about early 2000's. After that, the progression and tech took off too much and was too mass-market to be "classic". You can have a classic brand I think - the Specialized Stumpjumper is one that springs to mind - as a model that has a continual link back to the past.

For mtbs the "retrobike" cut off is 1997. The most obvious indicator is steel frames. Plus rim v disc brakes, rarity and not full suspension. I see no reason to consider only road aka race replica bikes as being "classic".

djnotts wrote: ↑13 Apr 2022, 1:28pm For mtbs the "retrobike" cut off is 1997. The most obvious indicator is steel frames. Plus rim v disc brakes, rarity and not full suspension. I see no reason to consider only road aka race replica bikes as being "classic".

Agreed, it definitely corresponds to an era. MTBs - mid 80's to late 90's / early 00's. Road bikes, I reckon could cover a slightly larger timespan, maybe late 70's to mid 00's which was when carbon really started to come in.

Not sure if we'll be able to look back at current bikes and go "ah yes, a classic..." in quite the same way.

Same with events and hills. Some races and some hills are classics; some are just normal races and normal hills!

I think the definition depends on the age of the individual. For me, aged 50, 'classic' bikes would include those made in the '80s and '90s, with steel frames mainly, but for my father's generation (age 90) anything 1960s or earlier might count.

'Classic' cars start at 20y of age according to insurers.

My oldest bike was made in '94 and my car in '95.......

I think, to be truly classic, an item has to have stood the test of time and still be revered by many for a variety of reasons... beauty, clever design, novelty, nostalgia. I don't think twenty years is enough, fifty possibly is, so will there be any classic carbon frames still in one piece and still usable by then?

Brucey wrote: ↑27 Mar 2018, 8:58pm

1942alexander wrote:

mercalia wrote:well the op has had his moneys worth. why risk it?

Has it really now come down to this? I repair and restore 60 to 70 year old bikes, all of them still capable of being ridden. If this attitude is the norm today there will be nothing which can be termed a "classic" available for future generations to admire and covet as we do with almost any other vintage item.

yeah, well that is a problem with plastic, and plastic bikes are no exception. Probably there will just be a nasty archaeological layer which is comprised of various forms of plastic tat, bikes included.

Douglas Adams thought that society might collapse into a morass of shoe shops selling ever-more short-lived shoes, but it could just turn out to be bicycles instead.....

cheers

rogerzilla wrote: ↑10 Apr 2022, 7:05am One definition would be whether you could use it on an Eroica ride, so pre-STI , threadless forks, aero brake levers and clipless pedals. Up to somewhere in the 1980s.

Another one might be a bike you can ride without pedal reflectors at night, pre-1985.

I think pre-1970 is safest, then you are in the era of slightly fancier lugs, elaborate paint lining and panels, and components that only just about work!

Most of mine might qualify (mid 80s). Goes with all that retro Tour footage on YouTube..

pwa wrote: ↑10 Apr 2022, 5:11am I suppose the OCLV takes people back to the days when a certain person appeared to be pulling off some sort of miracle and at the same time proving that carbon was the way forward for race bikes. It is the emblem of a now tainted but significant era in competitive cycling. Just as the original VW Beatle will forever be associated with Hitler, the OCLV will always conjure up the face of he who must not be named.

The unnamed miracle worker and Hitler had one other thing in common or rather hadn't one thing in common.

My picks would be in order of classicness

1 penny farthing
2 raleigh chopper
3 dawes galaxy