oldlugs

Over the past few years I've accumulated a good many vintage bike parts, most of these parts are pre-1970, many are prewar.
My main concern is with the used items, the boxes, can's, and jars of various used parts that accumulate over he years.
For an example, last November I cleaned out a bike shop that was in a man's garage and basement. I don't think he ever actually was in business
as a bike shop but he had accumulated over 200 bikes and filled a good portion of the house, basement, and garage, plus two trailers out back with used bike parts.
Now a lot of the stuff was/is likely junk, and things like children's bikes and department store stuff gets donated and not stored for even a day. I do often save wheels though off those bikes if they're old enough.
The bikes are one thing, but used parts are another. That one house ended up filling up my entire 24ft long enclosed trailer with boxes of small parts. Some items were already boxed and marked, others were scattered around in bags, cans and jars, and others were hanging loose on the walls and from the rafters.
We only had one day to empty the place so it went fast, we went in with boxes, zip lock bags and magic markers, plus 70 55 gallon drums. What we did was take the drums and mark them 'handle bars', 'derailleurs', 'freewheels', etc. Then we sorted the bulk of it into the cans and loaded them on the trailer when they were full.
It took four trips but as agreed, I took "EVERYTHING". I weeded out about 1/3 of it all right away, making that stuff the last load and it went away a few days later.

My big issue now is on what to save and what to toss. As I dig through boxes, I find boxes marked "Sturmey Archer AW" and inside will be the dissassembled guts to maybe 30 hubs. (There's also drums of hubs that were cut out of wheels and saved, basically a drum of every three speed or coaster brake hub you can imagine, and just as many old high flange road bike hubs. The guy saved everything, good or bad and he cleaned nothing. so the boxes are greasy, filled with used parts and hard to search through. Worse yet, he didn't always sort things very well. I'm finding boxes marked New Departure or Bendix that have other misc. parts dumped in them as well. Some may have been us 'saving space' towards the end, but many were just stored that way.
Then there are things like old rear racks, chain guards, and forks, many so obscure or odd I have no clue as to what they came off of.
The old guy told me he saved the headbadge off every bike he stripped, and he's been at it since he got back from the war. He was 93.
The box of headbadges is a wooden soda box filled with cigar boxes labeled by country of origin. So far I counted 731 headbadges, some going back to before WW1.
In the end, we hauled the one container as it sat, the other was too far gone to move so it got emptied one box at a time. A lot of the boxes are old waxed cardboard produce boxes. It appears some of of the older boxes were boxed by the bike they came off of. He removed calipers with the cable and levers still attached and stuffed it all in a box and put it away marked with the model, frame size and brand of bike. Some were marked with stickers that have fallen off, others got wet in the one trailer that had a rusty spot in the roof.

I was starting to think that I was likely best off to just scrap it all because so much of it is either un-identified or in unknown condition. but lately I find myself digging through those boxes looking for some odd part that I can't buy new. As a good exampler, this morning I needed a part for an old Corson coaster brake hub and I went digging, after finding and pulling out about 30 boxes marked misc. coaster brake hubs, I finally found the parts I was after mixed into a box marked Iver Johnson, that had mostly rusty bolts and some Bendix parts in it. Later I found a cigar box full of parts just like I was after.
A lot of the parts are so obscure they won't sell online in a timely fashion, and I really don't care to be listing and selling stuff that way.
I'm mainly looking for a better way to sort and store this stuff. The ziplock bags work well for some items but most of the items in the bags were in his small drawer cabinets and they're mixed items. Besides, sorting through 3000 bags of parts to find what your after won't work.
I did sort out a good bit of the new parts he had into recycled card file cabinets but those are only good for small parts.
Along with storage of these items I need to find a way to clean and inspect them as well. Parts from used coaster brakes and such are a mess, it leads to a greasy, dirty box that no one wants to handle.
When it comes to bikes, the keeper lot for me are the older balloon tire bikes, English three speeds, and 26" Schwinn. Plus any larger frame road bike. I sell off or part out the small bikes, but most end up as frames hanging on hooks out in the trailer. Even with this latest bike boom, anything under 23" frame size is basically unsellable. I can sell the wheels, and all the parts but list it as a whole bike and I get internet silence. Put those parts on a 63cm frame, and its gone the next day.
(I actually have a guy who collects what he calls 'monster' bikes, anything 63cm or larger in a road bike and he's all over it).
I also tend to part out ladies frame bikes, they're usually better cared for and in better condition overall so they donate a lot of good parts. The frames however usually end up in the scrap pile

I think if I find he right way to store these, I can get the lot down to about a tenth of its current size, and hopefully get my one car trailer, my porch, and half my basement back.

bark_eater 

You need too find some one with different tastes in bike junk to help you process the pile. Pre covid I might give you some time. Short of scrapping everything it sounds like you could stock half the co-ops on the east coast with greasy parts. You might parlay free labor and a tax deduction. It also sounds like you could put an industrial sized ultrasonic parts washer to good use, as shinny parts are worth twice as much as dirty parts. The head badge collection might give you clues about what valuable parts are in the pile so you can create a list of what to look out for. If you posted pictures of the badges on line you might get feed back from people looking for parts for a particular bike.

jeirvine 

I would say that's a good problem to have. But I'm not paying for storage space.

dedhed

I can tell you a few Sturmey parts I'd take off your hands

cudak888 

First, post pictures of the pile. It'll get all of us C&V'ers all giddy.

Second, get yourself an army of Large Flat Rate boxes. Line up ten of them, pre-taped on the bottom, with no gaps in between, on the floor. Might help to put weights or stoppers on each side to keep them from moving.

Begin the task of going through the pile. Any bits you see that you don't want, empty into the Large Flat Rate boxes so that the parts are distributed (mostly) evenly across them. If you find an entire box from your pile that you don't want, literally pour the contents into the Flat Rate boxes.

Finally, once the pictures make us all salivate, go on the Sales forum and offer each Large Flat Rate Box as a $30 Mystery Box. Content random and not guaranteed. This covers the shipping + $10 for your time per box, and you both satisfy all the salivating C&V'ers while clearing out all the bits you don't want - without doing it piecemeal.

It is similar in theory to our existing Box O'Crap program here on the forum, but in this case, the buyer pays $10 extra and gets to keep all the Crap. The Box O'Crap has been going strong for years now, so no reason why your Box O'Crap to Keep ("Box O'Crapojacks?") wouldn't work.

For the larger stuff, sell all the handlebars, saddles, etc. as a huge lot, locally, via Craigslist or OfferUp. No pick-and-choosers. "Take it all or get lost."

-Kurt

P.S.: Like all the others here, the mere mention of "Sturmey parts" sounds exciting. Also, if you find known good stuff like kickback hubs in there, put them to the side for individual sale.

repechage

Create the ultimate box of crap goodwill box.
i bet after 10 forwarding the box will be small and light.

63rickert

Mark Mattei, Cycle Smithy, Chicago.

Or Larry Black, Mt. Airy Bikes, Maryland.

Neither of these guys should still be buying, addiction is strong. They have done this many many times before. In the unlikely event they aren’t buying they know who is and why you asked.

If you have the time and energy it would be kind if you were to offer some of the obviously desirable parts here

non-fixie 

Yes, some sort of adoption program would be good, I think. It would be a shame to see those rare parts go to waste, yet I recognize the OP's predicament.

Piff 

I also agree that the community here will be happy to buy old parts. Kurt's idea sounds fun! I also think that if you have a robust local co-op you could probably invite them to come by and take parts/bikes if you do a bit of organization before-hand.

obrentharris 

A few thoughts:
-Each of us has our own fantasy/nightmare image of your parts collection. Each of us is going to base our response on that image. I think we can give better suggestions with a dozen representative photographs so we have a better idea of the magnitude and nature of the collection.
-Keep the stuff that might conceivably come in hand for you in your lifetime. Sell or give away the rest.
-I think the headbadge collection will net a pretty penny on eBay. Yes; you will make more money if you sell them one by one, but it sounds like you don't want that kind of headache.
-Listing quantities of items for sale here and on the Cabe might be a good option that doesn't require a huge amount of sorting. List things by loosely-related boxfull; miscellaneous suntour components in one box, Sturmey Archer hubs in another, '50s and '60s racing bike components in another, etc. Use post office flat-rate boxes so you don't have the additional task of calculating shipping for each box.
-Wheels, handlebars, and frames are expensive to ship. You might be better of finding local homes for them unless they are valuable enough to be worth the shipping cost.
Brent

USAZorro

That might be convenient for the person looking to get rid of it all in one go, but it does little to improve the chances that the parts will ever get used.

63rickert

Be realistic. Most of these parts will never be used. Any improving the odds at all is a good thing.

63rickert

Also those guys know how to sort and sift because they have done this before. If either of them were willing to come and look in one hour they would create more order than you could imagine. If they got interested.....

USAZorro

Not denying that. I've met Larry. I like Larry. Larry has some things I might be interested in buying, but I've never bought anything from him. He has lots of things that don't seem to be for sale. Not saying what you've suggested is a bad idea. There may be plenty of things that there is absolutely no hope in finding re-use for, and yeah, that stuff may as well get taken somewhere as scrap. Guys like those you've mentioned likely could sort that part out quickly. They also have (I believe) the means to pony up several thousand for what's left. I can see that possibly being a life-changing event for the OP.

It really all comes down to what he values. If time and space are most precious, the answer might be "A". If it's getting top dollar, it might be "B". If it's seeing the parts put to use, it might be "C".

My post was only intended to inform that, if it's "C", I think cudak888's idea (or some variant of it) would be more effective than filling up existing warehouses.

vintagebicycle

I'm not sure how many parts or how crusty they may be but I bought a medium size ultrasonic parts washer with a heater a few years ago and its not much good on badly encrusted old grease. Nothing works better than lacquer thinner or gas and a round brush. What I ended up doing for more items is keeping a 50 gallon mineral spirits tank outside in a storage trailer where I can load a lot of parts into a basket and just let them soak for a few weeks, every so often I pull out a basket, dip it in lacquer thinner or gas an d let it dry before sorting out the good from the bad. I found that the sorting is best left up to me, only I know what can be reused or what is trash. That can't be left up to someone who doesn't have a horse in the race or someone who knows that every part they discard is one less they have to hand clean.

I too converted part of my basement to a parts room, I basically put up a row of 12" steel shelving and bought several hundred steel bins which I believe were military surplus. Most even had metal dividers in them. They're deep enough to fit whole hubs and just long enough not to waste any space on the shelves. I basically turned five pallets of cardboard boxes and 75 plastic tubs into a compact parts source. I keep anything that could possibly ever be reused. All too many times I've thrown away a part for a minor defect only to realize 10 years later that I'd gladly have reused that part today because nothing better is available.

40 years ago during my days working in a bike shop I remember the owner telling me to throw away all the used New Departure 'junk', we don't see that stuff any more, a few year later he tossed out even the new parts. You have no idea how glad I am that I was already a packrat back in those days because those boxes of parts that I squirreled away in the rafters have saved my ass a thousand times over the years. Not to mention how many new hubs I built out of those piles of parts.
He did the same thing with old rims, they threw out hundreds of vintage steel rims because they were 'obsolete'. I now ride on pristine wheels on my Raleigh because I saved them from back in the day.
When that shop closed up, they threw away the tools and what parts remained. I was lucky enough that a local scrap guy stopped by to see if I wanted any of it before he hauled it to the yard. I got my two truing stands and both bike stands that way.

I think what we overlook is how many parts we didn't save over all the years, think about how many old shops closed up and got shoveled into dumpsters by folks who didn't know bikes. To them its just junk in the way.
I've got a few buddies who have no clue why on earth a grown man would play with bicycles. To them a bike is a kids toy and nothing more.
What's bad is that much of that thinking gets passed down to their kids.

There was a time when the balloon tire bikes were making a comeback, but as the generations who remember them grew old and passed on, interest in them dwindled.
I do see some interest returning in those but not like it was. Balloon tire bikes are more just an oddity now than a nostalgic piece of history.
Old Scwhinn's, old English three speeds, and old balloon tire bikes and their parts will likely never go away completely, however, eventually parts for them will. They don't make new parts, and I'll always prefer good used over Chinese when it comes to fixing something.
Don't discount parts you see no value in, there is always someone out there who thinks differently and those parts may well become good trade bait for something you need.
I sat on a dozen or so stripped out old Schwinn ladies bike frames for 20 years, they were stuffed up in the rafters after being used for parts to fix a similar men's model. I finally had a guy show up who wanted them. I was able to trade those frames for several spools of brand new bicycle chain, including a roll or 1" pitch or skip link chain.Having all the new chain still doesn't stop me from saving the old chains though, nothing looks more out of place on an old bike than a brand new shiny chain.
I don't sell parts, the parts I buy are to facilitate putting old bikes back together.

Over the years I've run across several hoarders who had massive collections of what turned out on the surface to be mostly junk, but as time goes on, those junk piles keep yielding more and more parts. I bought two 40ft containers 25 years ago, and that's my limit when it comes to what I can keep, that combined with my own personal basement bike shop, I've got plenty of room. The one trailer is shelved out on both sides and the isle is pretty much filled with bikes now, some for parts, some as future projects.I've slowly purged most of the derailleur and youth bikes and have gone mostly to just upright coaster brake and three speed bikes. My second trailer is a mix of old used parts in bins, piles of handle bars, forks, frames, and wheels, and a couple dozen parts bikes and possible projects. All new parts end up getting sorted and shelved inside.

My biggest concern is that when I retire from work in a few years the plan to move south to somewhere cheaper to live. I'm dreading the move because I know it'll take 7 or 8 tractor trailers to move all my bikes, tools, and toys.
Basically, for me, my hobbies have to support themselves money wise, they need to make me enough money to pay the taxes and bills as well as cover any other expenses they incur. My main job, and subsequent retirement is for me, that's my travel money and beer money.
I downsized about 15 years ago, cutting back on the size of my collection by about 2/3rds that that time, it didn't last, the new found space soon got filled with even better deals when the economy crashed and others wanted to turn their bicycle and parts stash into cash. A few big clean outs back then led to a few more, and a few more and I was soon far beyond where I had started before downsizing. A couple of those deals also led to my ending up with a rather large outboard collection as well, plus the purchase of two vans and several enclosed trailers.

rccardr 

That sounds like an awful lot of stuff.

noglider 

I like Kurt's idea a lot. Or donate the crap to a bike coop. It will be used well by deserving people, so you get good karma for that. You might even get a tax deduction.

ramzilla

OMG...........................................!

> "The box of headbadges is a wooden soda box filled with cigar boxes labeled by country of origin. So far I counted 731 headbadges, some going back to before WW1." <

Please get some help. Call a bicycle co-op. Try to get some guidance & counseling from someone experienced in this kind of stuff. This is mind blowing stuff!!!!!!!

Be good. Have fun. Good luck.

sunnyone

Just curious - what was he planning to do with a dozen old Schwinn ladies bike frames?

oldlugs

We don't have any bike co-ops in the area, and most charities only want ready to ride bikes.
I'm not rebuilding junkers to donate, I don't have that kind of time.

The box of headbadges I mentioned is only from that one clean out, I cleaned out a place a couple of years go that had coffee cans full of headbadges, some dating back to old Penny Farthings and early bone shakers. I actually bought a display case and at one time was going to pin the interesting one's to a backboard and hang them in my living room but someone here didn't like that idea for some reason.
I've sold a few head badges on eBay years ago but not lately. I suppose some are too obscure to find bidders, others may be just too common. I did start to bag and tag some of them, but never got the time to really finish. What I hate to do is sell off parts for a bike or frame that's still here that may be worth putting back together. There's nothing I hate worse then to have to buy something I just sold by mistake. I've dug through those boxes more than once to find a missing badge I needed myself over the years so I'm not in a hurry to sell them.
This all started about 20 years ago, I had gotten the idea to fix up a bike I bought new years ago that had made its way through the family over the years and by the time it got back to me some 19 years later it was in rough shape. The first thing I did was to return to the shop where I bought it only to find out they were in the midst of retiring and were looking to unload everything in a hurry because the building had sold. Not realizing what I was getting into I made an offer and they took it, I bought every last part in the building. (And little did I know that also included the contents of two 40ft trailers out back and 312 new bikes in the warehouse next door. They wanted the place empty in a hurry and the inventory meant nothing to them). Having just ended a contract at that time at work and having closed up one of my businesses, I had an empty building to put it all in, about 12,000 sq ft or so of empty warehouse.

That started an 8 year long eBay selling period, which went on until eBay stopped letting sellers leave negative feedback on bad buyers.
I didn't have many bad experiences but there were a few that really made me rethink the whole eBay thing. I wasn't on there to sell parts anyhow, I was just trying to get rid of the stuff that I had no interest in, but it did lead to me buying various new parts to keep the numbers up and I found myself selling Chinese made repro parts and modern BMX parts for a bit too.
I did that for a few years and kept buying up old shops and odd collections here and there, all over the place. The largest was just outside of NYC, where I bought roughly 11 trailers worth of new and used bikes and parts, some dating back to the 19th century. I probably still have a few items from that lot from way back in 2002. It actually stemmed from an eBay listing that was wrong, the guy was listing what ended up being the tip of the iceberg and had no idea what he was selling. A 3 hour drive and a few drinks later I was organizing a massive clean out of a shop that had been in the same location since 1930, and had been locked and boarded up in 1972, completely untouched from the day the owner died. It took 30 helpers, 6 trucks, and two trips to get it all loaded an moved.
You know your doing something when the move attracts the local news crew and causes a traffic jam of on lookers. After that fiasco we learned quickly to bring tarps and not to attract a ton of attention. Not being from an area, you have no idea how popular a certain guy may have been there.

Ever since that first lot, I've happened upon about 20 or so places that I bought some or all of the bike parts. A few were pretty big hauls, a few were only a truck load or so. I never really went looking, they seem to find me. I'm working on a deal now that may be the largest yet.
More than once I've said enough is enough and I'll dump it all and forget about it but usually just about the time I get to that point another deal pops up and it starts all over again. I'm not a kid anymore and these days I try to limit myself to what fits in my two big trailers and what I have room for. I don't care to do another 3,000 bike, 11 trailer clean out anytime soon.

I haven't been to Trexlertown in years, both times I went it rained or looked like rain and the turn out was pretty thin. There were lots of lookers but not so many buyers.

The problem now is how to organize what amounts to a truck load or two of small parts. The new parts are no problem, they're clean and easy to put in bins.
The used items that need cleaning are the problem. I do have a few parts washers, but not here and certainly not in the house. If I get time to work on a project its usually late at night or on the weekend, I'll grab a six pack and go sort parts or put a bike together. What I hate doing it having to go dig through boxes to find something I need and have no clue which box its in only to find it and have to dig though a box of crusty greasy used parts to get the one thing I need.
In the past didn't save or even bother with 'used' parts because I had usually had new parts instead, but as new parts get depleted or are needed for more pristine builds, I realize I need to make use of some good used parts when I can. Often there's no other choice.

I'm not up for folks digging through things here or anywhere else, not just due to current events, I really don't want a ton of people picking through things as its hard to figure a price without really looking to see what something is worth or what I paid for it. Or worse yet, not knowing what box or pile they took it from, meaning it could be for a bike I haven't gotten to yet. Not to mention a lot of stuff isn't nearly as organized as I wish it were. I've got bikes in between shelves, bikes hanging from hooks, and parts aren't organized to any system other than I know where I put them. Some are with other similar parts, some are put up with other parts to the same bike, and others are put there because there was room on the shelf there. Some parts are just stacked in boxes and even I don't know what's in some of them boxes. (On a few big clean outs I had a buddy and his kids helping box and load things, they weren't very bike wise and labels are often wrong or the contents mixed up). I've also had my fill of guys who show up and tell me something is worthless and that they'll take it off my hands for $2. I had boxes of new old stock prewar cranksets and sprockets, all 1" pitch skip tooth, new in the box, plus several boxes of brand new 36h New Departure Model A hubs that some guy thought he'd get for $20. I had another guy tell me the four complete new old stock New Departure Twin Streak hub kits I sold, new in the box, were all counterfeit. He swore up and down that there's no way four of them survived this long unused. What he didn't know is that I had a dozen of them and I kept one which was stripped down to make a video on how to assemble one. I saved it to remind me of that guy and why I don't do ebay anymore.
I don't do eBay, I got burned there twice by bad buyers who buy something and return a box of rocks to get the item for free. Once was a $10 set of reproduction handgrips, the second time was a $300 early motorcycle hub.
I list on CL, and only after I'm certain I don't need it for anything. Some items sell fast, others sit. Lately complete bikes last only a few hours.
If I can find a suitable way to clean and organize some of the older parts I'd likely have a lot more to sell but as it is, much of it just sits in boxes or gets pushed farther into the corner or lost in the trailers.

cudak888 

You definitely have you system, but cleaning all the dirty parts before passing them on also sounds like a self-imposed chore. Just saying.

-Kurt

obrentharris 

It sounds like you aren't too different from the rest of us who suffer from the "I might need this someday" syndrome, only your hoard is bigger than most of ours.

In response to the question posed in your thread title I say "Keep it all!" When you're gone another generation of bike nuts can haul away the collection and carry on the tradition. It sounds like you may be a few years younger than me, so I regret that I probably will not be able to attend.
Brent

oldlugs

If I don't sort and clean them I won't know what is in the boxes in the first place. Its hard to tell whats good or bad if its covered in petrified grease. Not everything is that bad but the one guy had saved everything, and didn't throw anything way. We found old boxes with used cables, used casings, used bearings, plus other parts from the same bike. He basically took a bike apart then stuffed everything into the smallest box he could fit it all in, what didn't fit in the box got numbered and tagged and hung in the rafters.
Apparently he had been doing that for decades. Some of the stuff was really clean and looked like he stripped an almost new bike, other stuff was pretty rough, but he save everything. One place I cleaned out had two rows of frames hanging from a beam, each row was about 40ft long. He had bent old spokes to make hooks and had wired each frame to eye bolts in the beam, when that beam was full, he started wiring a second row to the bottom of each frame. Every bike was numbered to match a corresponding box. It took a while but as I went through everything there I realized that the numbers he used corresponded to numbers on a list he kept. The last date on the list was in Sept. of 1967. Either he quit keeping track after that point or it was really the last time he was actively working on bikes there.
The place was packed to the ceiling, there were bikes on top of bikes, piles of boxes, bikes hanging in the upstairs rafters, and several hundred piled up outside that had rusted away and gotten covered in ivy. Most of what was junk there wasn't due to the bikes being cheap bikes, it was because of water damage that had ruined part of the building in later years, and everything that was left outside.
The place last fall was almost as bad but it was all in a house with an attached garage. He had the garage, basement, attic, a shed, and two trailers full of parts and bikes. That one was more parts than bikes.
Both places had lots of boxes of greasy parts. Basically boxes marked Bendix, New Departure, Morrow, etc containing just piles of hub parts that were taken apart and dumped into boxes covered in grease. Being greasy kept them from rusting, but being greasy also keeps you from seeing whether they're all good parts or just a bunch of worn out scrap. As I clean boxes from the one location I'm finding its about 50/50.
The junk gets tossed in the scrap barrel, but the parts I hate to toss are things like the perfectly good 28 hole hub shells, or maybe a good hub shell that's got a few rusty specks on the chrome that makes it maybe not nice enough to use on a perfect bike but just fine for someone's daily rider.

Small frames are also a tough sell, I almost never put one together because they don't sell. I've had clean smaller frame Raleigh Sports or similar models sit on CL for years unsold while larger frame models don't last a day. Woman's bikes sell faster. (I've actually been getting more requests lately for woman's three speed bikes from older guys who have trouble getting on a larger men's frame as they get older).

vintagebicycle

I think he was making some sort of sculpture or art piece with them. He didn't care what shape they were in or what kind of parts they used.
I had accumulated a dump truck load of them over the years and he took every last one of them. I haven't seen him a few years now though.
The first time he picked up a pile of frames he showed up with an old pickup truck and a dump trailer, the second time he was here he was driving an
short school bus with graffiti all over it and a huge roof rack. They piled the bikes on top of the bus. The second time around I also let a bunch of complete but junk 10 speeds go as well, all department store bikes. They were more interested in the colors than whether or not it functioned as a bike. I was glad to get the pile out of the back room and shed.

sunnyone

That’s great that someone found a use for all those bikes. Not many people interested in building up old women’s frames.
I remember seeing an arch made out of old bikes in a Knoxville park; it was pretty cool. I just googled it, and all kinds of interesting images of bicycle sculptures came up.