What's New at OldRoads.com 10-Mar-2012 Well, we're almost through with winter here in Boston. This was the mildest winter we’ve had in years and sales were good throughout the season. Biking is growing in Boston and other cities around the US and that’s great for everyone. A few less car trips can’t hurt. We’ve found some great bikes over the past several months and have a very deep inventory, so we’re ready for the 2012 season. On the media front – we have a couple cycles in an upcoming TV pilot, but that’s it so far. -Vin 20-Nov-2011 A few updates: We've been using a local bike shop to pack and ship our cycles. They're doing a great job. Cycles For Sale I believe the SPIKE cable tv network has made a permanent link to our appearance on Auction Hunters, here it is: Auction Hunters. The bicycle part starts at around the 11 minute mark. We’ve upgraded our Discussion Areas. You can now have a login (if you want, but it is not necessary), and picture posting and other features are much better than our old 'home grown' forums. http://OldRoadsForums.com -Vin 28-Sep-2011 The season in Boston is winding down and we are going to resume posting cycles for sale here at OldRoads.com soon. We’re going to arrange packing/shipping through a local shop which has been in business since the 1960s. They know how to box up a cycle and they get good UPS shipping rates. This gives us the chance to spend less time on packing/shipping, and more time on digging out and cleaning up interesting inventory. -Vin 25-Jul-2011 This year the summer slowdown never came. We've been out straight for months. Here are two big media things which came out this week: Look for the ’Beantown Bidders’ episode on Auction Hunters, next airing at 9am Sunday July 31, and 9:30pm Sunday July 31, and 10:30pm Tuesday August 2, on the SPIKE network. Also see the great write-up in Bicycle Times Magazine. On news stands now! -Vin 4-Apr-2011 Most of the snow is gone in Boston and the season has just about started. I think it's going to be another great year and we're getting some good media exposure including an appearance on a TV show and an article in a National magazine. No info to share right now, but we'll post links here when these things come out. -Vin 15-Dec-2010 We're now hosting parts sales for CoolOldBikes(tm). They have over 10,000 square feet of new old stock bike parts: Parts from CoolOldBikes -Vin 27-Oct-2010 One of our philosophies here at OldRoads.com is to share the tools we use. We share tools with our customers in the shop and we share our on-line tools with you, Dear Reader. So here’s something we use when we determine how to price a used or vintage bicycle. It reads classified ads and on-line auctions, every 10 minutes, from cities around the US. This tool is slow to load, and it is not particularly user-friendly, but you may find it of value. http://OldRoads.com/active_bicycle_price_search.asp -Vin 28-Sep-2010 Whoa. We have not updated our "What's New" page in over 4 months! Things should start to slow down for us in a few weeks and we can focus more time on OldRoads.com, but here's what we'll be working on this fall: The website (OldRoads.com) A better method of letting users post pictures (yeah, after 15 years we're finally going to get that right.) We're debating on whether or not we should move to commercial Discussion Area software instead of using our own home-grown software. One sticking point with me is that I'd prefer to not require people to login in order to post a message. I'd like OldRoads to be an easy place for new and existing users to post messages. Expanding our Price Guides. Our Vintage Bicycle Price Guide and our Used Bicycle Price Guide have proven to be very popular. The Used Bicycle Price Guide (which also contains Vintage Cycles) currently has 55,000 recorded prices. We are planning on at least doubling that number. Parts and cycles sold from the website Right now we're not shipping cycles, though as the season slows down I'm going to want to keep my 2 best mechanics busy, so we may resume shipping. OldRoads inventory is pretty deep with classic 3-speeds and road bikes which are not appropriate to sell in our retail shop (people visiting our retail shop generally just want a good city commuter bike) so we may resume posting them here. If you're looking for Balloon Tire cycle parts, we're entering into an arrangement with a guy who has several trailerloads of parts. His people will do the packing and shipping, but we'll be displaying the parts here and they can be ordered though OldRoads.com We'll be expanding our selection of 3-speed parts, both Sturmey-Archer and Shimano. We're also working on building an inventory of aftermarket parts which will fit old English and American 3-speeds. -Vin 15-May-2010 Boston Spring Tweed Ride (or linen ride?) is coming up! Boston Spring Tweed Ride -Vin 12-May-2010 We get written up in a newspaper or magazine a few times a year. I'll try to post links to these articles on this page. Here's the latest: Arlington Advocate - May, 2010 -Vin 29-Apr-2010 Haven't had the time to update our "What's New" page in almost 2 months. The shop is crazy busy. It's all good! -Vin 3-Mar-2010 The cycling season is almost here. Any time we have temps over 45 degrees, we move some bikes. Right now we have 100 on the floor and ready to ride, and another 50 in storage which are tuned and ready to go, and about 400 more which we're working on. I hope we can keep up this year! -Vin 10-Jan-2010 Not many people coming and going at the shop during January, but it gives us a chance to catch up on reconditioning bikes and cleaning up stuff on the website. -Vin 22-Nov-2009 We've had a very mild November up here in Massachusetts and this has been a great month for commuting by bike. -Vin 28-Oct-2009 During the off-season here in Boston we'll be posting more of our inventory. Local pickup only (Cambridge, MA) unless you arrange all shipping. We're not packing or shipping right now. Please email first if interested in a specific cycle, just to be sure we'll have it on the floor and not in storage. -Vin 23-Oct-2009 Swap Meet, Dudley, MA. 21-November-2009 (Details) -Vin 11-Oct-2009 We've had a lot of bicycles in a lot of movies over the past 18 years. As we find photos or videos of our bikes, we'll post them here. A clip of one of our bicycles in the Sandra Bullock movie "THE PROPOSAL" (2009) -Vin 10-Oct-2009 Photos from the Boston Tweed Ride: http://www.flickr.com/groups/bostontweedride/pool -Vin 5-Oct-2009 The Boston Tweed Ride was great. Pictures and details coming soon. -Vin 24-SEP-2009 The season is still going strong. Students from the area's colleges and universities are snapping up bikes and we're having problems keeping inventory on the floor. We're looking forward to things quieting down. Next week we're renting a load bicycles for a movie being filmed up the street from us in Boston. It is called 'The Town' and stars (and is directed by, I think) Ben Affleck. -Vin 5-SEP-2009 Boston Tweed Ride Sunday October 4, 2009 Boston, MA 1-SEP-2009 Come on Winter. Too busy, we need a break. When will we get snow and ice here in Boston? And the shop in the next message below didn't pan out...again...for the 3rd time in the past 18 years. They suck me in and I fall for it again. -Vin 27-July-2009 We don't ship during the cycling season, BUT!, we've put together a deal with a Massachusetts bike shop who DOES ship and who DOES NOT use da web!. We will be posting their vintage inventory here. They are a family-owned shop selling Schwinn, Raleigh and other makes for over 50 years. The depth of their inventory is amazing, I leave drooling every time I visit. High end road bikes, Schwinn Sting-Ray Krates, Raleigh Tourists and Sports 3-speeds, big old balloon tire bikes - they have them all. So, watch this space. I'm hoping to get it going this week. -Vin 2-July-2009 It has been a very rainy June, but people are still looking for good commuter bicycles. 3-speeds and road bikes seem to be most popular, and no one wants mountain bikes. I set up a page on Twitter - it'll probably be too much work to keep it fresh during the cycling season, but here it is: http://twitter.com/oldroads -Vin 15-May-2009 Videos Videos Videos It looks like the 100+ videos I did for ExpertVillage have made their way to YouTube. I'm a bike mechanic, not a teacher, but if you want to check them out, here's the link: Vintage Bicycle Videos -Vin 1-May-2009 This has been a very busy season. We try to always have around 60 used and vintage cycles ready for sale in our shop but we're barely able to keep up. I'm psyched. -Vin 31-MAR-2009 A couple updated videos on YouTube: Bicycles of the 1970s Bicycles of the 1960s -Vin 22-MAR-2009 A BIG 'Thank You' to Jim Huntington for setting up today's 12th annual Monson Swap! We started out for Monson at about 4:30 this morning in pitch black, 30 degree weather. Pulling into a rest area on the Mass Pike we spotted a 1 ton Ford pickup pulling a trailer - fully loaded with bikes (I ended up buying a dozen of them - mostly Brit 3-speeds). When we got in to Monson it was just beginning to get light out and you could see several dozen vehicles and trailers loaded with bikes and parts. Ballooners, antiques, musclebikes, DL-1s, wicked high end (I’m from Boston) road bikes, 100 year old track bikes. It was classic Monson. Vendors and buyers came from as far south as Philly and as far north as Maine. If I had to guess, I’d say 400 to 500 cycles changed hands today. Great job, Jim! -Vin 6-MAR-2009 When trying to determine the price of a used bike, be sure to check our "Used Bicycle Price Guide". There are currently over 50 Thousand asking prices recorded there and it should help in determining the price of a cycle you are looking to buy or sell. -Vin 2-MAR-2009 Even though we just picked up another foot of snow here in Massachusetts, the cycling season has begun. Over the winter we worked with a company Vinyl Storys Music to clean up our website and improve our 'branding'. You'll start seeing these changes to OldRoads over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here are some other things we've worked on: A Splash Page A submission to a Bicycle Film Festival -Vin 22-JAN-2009 We're in the middle of winter and the snow is deep here in Massachusetts. BUT! Jim Huntington's 12th Annual Monson Swap Meet has been locked in. Details here: -Vin 24-DEC-2008 I've been working on a little blog, updated daily, which displays photos of old bicycles. I'm not sure how we'll integrate it into OldRoads yet, but here it is: Bicycle Picture Of The Day -Vin 22-DEC-2008 We were mentioned in the Boston Sunday Globe yesterday in an article about finding holiday gifts for cyclists titled: Some cold comfort for bikers -Vin 11-DEC-2008 We are starting to post our shop inventory on-line again: Bicycles for Sale -Vin 8-DEC-2008 The OldRoads T-Shirt is done: Here it is! -Vin 30-NOV-2008 How long has Vinny been doing bikes? Here he is in 1962 showing his twin sister proper oiling techniques.    6 year old Mechanics (1 meg) -N & G 20-NOV-2008 Three things to mention today: New Navigation - we've improved navigation throughout the site, so it should be easier to find things here at OldRoads.com T-Shirt - we've been working on a vintage bicycle t-shirt with a dumpster-diving theme (with the assistance of OldRoads participants!). The artwork is at the printing company and we should have the shirt in a few weeks. Price Guide - we've created a new price guide which shows the asking prices of vintage and used bicycles and parts. Currently there are over 44 thousand records in the database. Basically this is a tool we've been using over the past year or so in determining what to ask for certain cycles in our retail store. We've just tweaked it so it can be used on-line. Click on "Price Guides" and then "Vintage and Used Bicycles and Parts Price Guide" at the top of any page. -Vin 26-OCT-2008 Things are finally slowing down for us here in the Boston area. The leaves have turned and are falling off the trees, we've had a couple mild frosts and most area students who want a bicycle now have a bicycle. So now we get a little breathing room. Since opening and expanding our retail space in March we've learned what business we're in at this location. It turns out our brick-and-mortar shop is not as much a vintage bicycle shop as it is a used bicycle shop. And it turns out all of those of 5-speed women's Sears 'Free Spirits' and Huffy boat anchors we used to avoid are actually popular cycles for commuters. We've always known a Raleigh Sports makes a great commuter, but the collectabilty of them drives up their price. We're finding about 1/2 of the Boston, Somerville and Cambridge commuters don't care as much about style or class as they do about just having something they can leave locked up on the street that won't be bothered by thieves. A cycle with fenders, a chainguard, an upright riding position and a rack or basket is what our customers are looking for. The fact that we have them in original funky 1970s paint and decal schemes helps, too, so maybe our vintage heritage gives us an edge here. Over the next few months we'll be adding a lot more to the web site, including a new 'vintage and used' bicycle price guide with eventually over 50,000 recorded asking prices. -Vin 21-JUL-2008 The last of the vintage bicycle videos has been published: Vintage Bicycle Styles - Vin 3-JUL-2008 Expert Village has posted more vintage bicycle videos: Vintage Middleweight Bicycles Vintage English 3-Speed Bicycles Vintage Muscle Bicycles - Vin 23-JUN-2008 Some of the videos we did back in March are starting to appear on ExpertVillage.com. I had a tough time talking and thinking at the same time. 8 video series, each with 16 segments a minute or two long, with no notes or queue cards ain't easy for an old dude, but there may be some worthwhile info in them. Here are 4 of the series: Intro To Vintage Bicycles Vintage Bicycle Appraisal Tips Collecting Vintage Bicycles Accessories Vintage Balloon Tire Bicycles - Vin 16-MAY-2008 Man what a busy season. We're barely keeping up. Expensive gasoline must be good for business.. We did have time to be interviewed a couple weeks ago for an article in The Phoenix, a Boston paper. A lot of local vintage bike people are mentioned in the article. The consensus here is that I came across a wee bit too opinionated in the piece, but hey, I feel strongly about bikes and am decidedly anti-spandex. Here's the link: Wheeling through history. - Vin 10-MAR-2008 New retail space. There isn't enough local business to justify a full retail Vintage Bicycle storefront. BUT!.. We've just signed a lease for some space in an Antique Coop in Cambridge, MA. The location is perfect - 2 blocks from the Lechmere stop on the MBTA Green line, and a bus stop right out front. If you're coming by car, there is plenty of free parking. Come visit us at: Cambridge Antique Market 201 Msgr. O'Brien Highway,Cambridge, MA 02141 Open Tues.-Sun. 11a.m. - 6 p.m. Directions IIf you have a particular cycle or part you want to see, email us a few days ahead so we can make sure it is in the Cambridge space. 1-MAR-2008 A couple things to mention on this first day of March: First, this year marks our 14th year on the web. The second thing I want to mention is the videos we are shooting this week. A production company will be here for two days and we'll be shooting 16 series on Vintage Bicycles. In the end, the two days of filming will boil down to a couple of hours of final footage. I'll be doing the talking and really, I do look great on radio. -Vin 4-FEB-2008 Received news today of Sheldon Brown's passing. He has provided tremendous, accurate and easy-to-understand information on cycles to all of us for many years. Thank you Sheldon. 15-DEC-2007 Video of a 1971 Triumph cleanup. (see below for the disclaimer about the quality of our videos......) -Vin 1971 Triumph cleanup Part 1 - First look . (2.2 meg) 1971 Triumph cleanup Part 2 - Chrome and paint check . (2.9 meg) 13-DEC-2007 Our posted inventory of cycles is looking pretty low right now. This has been our busiest December since we started on the web in 1995. We have a lot more vintage bicycles in stock, so stay tuned. -Vin 30-NOV-2007 - Videos of a restoration Don't be looking for professional video or actors in these restoration videos. They might be kind of lame, but I'm old enough not to care and this is an easy way for us to show how some bicycle restorations are approached and completed. -Vin Iver Johnson Part 1 - First look . (1.6 meg) Iver Johnson Part 2 - First look . (3.5 meg) Iver Johnson Part 3 - Wooden hoops . (2.7 meg) Iver Johnson Part 4 - The project . (3.9 meg) Iver Johnson Part 5 - Chain problem . (2.9 meg) Iver Johnson Part 6 - Front hoop, again . (1.9 meg) Iver Johnson Part 7 - Front hoop, again... . (1.2 meg) Iver Johnson Part 8 - Completed . (2.2 meg) 11-NOV-2007 We picked up a couple great Iver Johnson cycles this weekend and are planning on doing a video restoration on them. We'll add links to updates here. 17-OCT-2007 We've set up a "Reader's Rides" section for you to build your own web site. 10-OCT-2007 We tried to get into the old bike shop this past weekend in order to take photos of their inventory as it sits. I wanted to show the rows of dust-covered cycles in their before state, but the owner would not let us go downstairs. He said we could take pictures of the Krate, Wizard, Panther and other show-condition cycles on the showroom floor, but would not be ready to let us photo the other cycles "until after the first frost". 12-SEP-2007 We're working on a consignment deal with an old bike shop. They have several hundred cycles including vintage lightweights, track bikes, Schwinn Sting-Rays, rod brake roadsters, ballooners, oddball musclebikes - basically a good cross-section of everything. We still have to work out details around packing, shipping, commissions, which cycles should we do first, etc., so watch this space. 1-SEP-2007 We're getting back into carrying a larger inventory of cycles and parts. Check our Cycles and Parts For Sale page. 1-MAR-2007 Have you seen us on "Antiques Roadshow FYI"? 15-DEC-2006 Our Bicycle Engine tests on YouTube 27-NOV-2006 Bicycles of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s on YouTube 14-AUG-2006 The bicycle swap at the Larz Anderson Museum of Transportation doesn't exist any more, but here are some photos from past events: Pictures from the Seventh Annual show in 2003 Pictures from the Fifth Annual show in 2001 Pictures from the Fourth Annual show in 2000 Concour Awards from the Fourth Annual show in 2000 Pictures from the Third Annual show in 1999 11_MAR-2004 Article about our business in the local paper 1995 We moved our business to the web in 1995. Though we don't have any of the original pages from our site, we did find an archived version from 1998 on Archive.org