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Old 11-12-21, 04:39 PM
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Vintage Schwinn
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Salubrious: Sorry to hear about the burglary. If the thieves know anything about the types of bicycles that they stole, you should definitely monitor both Ebay and the C.A.B.E. . Typical Cabers & Ebayers never deal in stolen goods, but some thief looking to unload one or more of them at closer to market value might engage the C.A.B.E. marketplace or dump it on Ebay, as you immediately connect with a large audience that knows & likes collecting those bikes, and also assumes that someone with a more ancient & obscure bicycle for sale would be the rightful owner and not a thief.
If the burglary was committed by opportunistic homeless thieves, the bikes might now reside within the local homeless encampments, but I see your location is St. Paul, MN......much too cold there, for a sizeable homeless population, as surviving in the elements from Nov until May would be nearly impossible.

Hopefully, you do get lucky, and your photos and recorded serial numbers, & photos clearly depicting each bicycle's serial number, will help in recovering these very nice classic bicycles. Nobody really ever thinks about it because normal people don't really ever consider theft (burglary) is likely from within our garage or when stored inside our homes. Yes, the probability of recovery of any bicycle theft is about zero. Law enforcement has greater priorities with more significant items, such as stolen cars etc. Vehicles are rarely recovered and they have a registered serial number with Title documenting ownership and needing a up to date official license plate(tag) to be legal. Some states do allow for BILL OF SALE in lieu of TITLE on vehicles more than fifteen years old, and some states do not. There are ways for criminals to effectively launder a stolen vehicle's title across several states, or they simply drive with a stolen license plate, or a "replica only--not legal for use" license plate that can be purchased for approx ~ $18 from at least a dozen vendors on ebay. Other effective ways for criminals are to swap vin number plate nearest the windshield with one in which they can obtain the legal title for. Police officers & Highway patrol officers rarely even look at the vin number plate there, and if they do to match the paper registration & proof of insurance card, they look quickly for less than two seconds to see that the numbers match.....which they would match.....they never notice that the vin number plate has been physically replaced.......they can't tell in such a brief observation that the rivets aren't exactly like factory equipment on that particular make/model..... (there are plenty of other "hidden vin number" locations on most all vehicles where the original vin# is stamped into the frame, sheetmetal, axle, etc but nobody ever looks at those unless the vehicle or its parts are found within a chop-shop or at the bottom of a lake or river, etc.) Didn't they catch the Oklahoma city bomber, that the feds eventually executed, from the vin stamping on part of the rear axle assembly of what was the rented large box truck?
Perhaps, if the burglary occured during daylight hours, you might canvass your neighborhood and ask your neighbors......perhaps someone has a doorbell or security camera that caught the suspects pickup truck with the bikes visible driving away........who knows you might get lucky with most of the tag number if it isn't a stolen truck with a stolen license plate. Likely, if the burglar(s) were in a vehicle, it was likely a pickup truck of some type, or less likely a Ford Econoline type van with no side windows, but an econoline-type van in a residential area where people are loading goods into the van Will Attract A Heckuva Lot More Suspicion than just folks loading goods into the back of a pickup truck.
You would be surprised at just how good the video resolution and field of capture is for today's security & doorbell cameras. My neighborhood which has very large homes and has been battling a wave of porch pirates since 2008 who tail the UPS, Fed-Ex, & Amazon delivery trucks, and then 30 seconds after the UPS driver/truck leaves out of sight, the porch pirate driver stops in front of the house & their passenger pirate runs fast to the porch and grabs the loot and runs back to the car, and off they go. Well, there are a couple of these teams that are now in prison because they didn't count on these very wealthy neighborhoods with older residents being hip to cameras and technology. They also didn't count on a retired district attorney being among the many victims. I guess that is one of many things they can think about while they sit most of the day in their jail cells. Yeah, cameras & license plate readers are something out of a George Orwell or Ray Bradbury book, but they do seem to be highly effective.
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