I had a Pea Picker as a kid , my Buddy currently has a Lemon Peeler . Coolest bicycle a kid could own .
There was a kid in the neighborhood that had an orange crate, I had a plain old 24” bike that was so much faster than his that he wanted me to trade with him even up. I didn’t want his slow turd, it looked cool but we could all out run it. Must have been summer of 69 I would have been ten. A long time ago…
I always wanted one, but I was a poor kid. The rich kid in our neighborhood had an am radio on his orange crate. We thought that was the coolest thing ever. My answer was I hooked an am radio to my dad’s old Air Force helmet so I would have stereo…..
https://www.strategy-business.com/article/17848 https://www.bikebrands.org/when-did-schwinn-go-bad/ The repops back in 99 are easily spotted by the front brake. Still cool and collected, but not as valuable as the originals, of course. As with other collectibles appealing to boomers, there are single bikes and collections that are hitting estate sales, so if you want to jump in, start diggin, but don't expect to use them as investments.
The Schwinn name has had several different owners since the original Chicago days. The stuff us old guys remember disappeared about the time my daughter was born. And she just turned 46 years old. They were one of the earliest bike companies to bring Chinese bikes into the US, long before some of the others. 80's "Schwinns" were mostly from Taiwan, built by Giant. Those new ones may look cool, but they aren't really reproductions, just copies. I sold them for a while in the 80s at my shop, but by the early 90s, all our other brands, while also imported, were much better bikes for the money. Like a lot of consumer products, the name means nothing anymore. Currently owned by Pon Holdings, also the owners of the names Mongoose, GT( just taken off the market again), Cannondale, and a lot of the big box store names, plus more. These won't ever be worth much.
I still have a Pixie that all of us kids rode. It has a removable cross bar to convert to a boys bike. It’s probably a 68’ model. We were poor kids, dad would just paint the bike a different color and Santa would bring it. We were never smart enough to wonder where the old bike went.
The Jalopy Journal
