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Bicycle collectors

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Despite the poor photography and questionable accuracy of some of the bikes and information both of these books should be a part of any serious collector's library. Before I ever bought my first bike I bought lots of books and spent a couple of months doing research. This helped me with a couple of things. First, I had a fairly clear direction of what I wanted to collect which prevented a lot of buyer's remorse. Secondly, the knowledge I gained helped me immensely in making informed decisions saving me lots of money and, again, preventing buyer's remorse. V/r Shawn
 
Books are a tough sell these days 10x more free info on the net , in the day those 2 books were the bible to some.

... but also a sign of the changing times to collect (changing) net references into printable form for later reference. Also there are still reference material both printed and physical that are outside the realm of the net that could be included in print formats.

The idea of it being a "massive" undertaking is over-stated. Collecting and formatting information is half of the undertaking of printed format, in this case most of the information is done, and re-formatting is limited. The undertaking would be sorting out what's in and what's out, and to the discerning mind of a few collectors, that comes very naturally.
 
Even if you just used info and photos from the internet this would be a significant undertaking. I think to do this justice you would need high resolution, quality photos along with well researched information to go with it. I would want to see various views of the bike so I could see the significant/unique components that make it special. That gets to another subject--the subject e.g. all bicycles, just ballooners, road bikes, BMX, TOCs, etc... . Just researching and writing the short articles that I've done so far have taken anywhere from 10 to 30 hours and that is a single subject! I'll stick with 'massive'. V/r Shawn
 
You're thinking about it from the perspective of one person. What you're talking about specifically, as a major roadblock is formatting (resolution etc) and editing, which from your experiences has been difficult. This is not necessarily the experiences of everyone.

When you think about it like that, it seems huge and impossible, which is obvious by the way you're talking/writing about it. Think about it as if there are 20 of us doing it, and suddenly, it becomes tangible, and enjoyable. Many hands make light work. Each of us have different skills, and they can be of use to the people around us, all working together towards a single goal.

For example, most of us here would consider Dave's Nostalgic.net as a viable source of both high quality photos, and reliable information. Dave has already formatted, and edited that information for us in that regard. This is as an example, and not suggesting turning nostagic.net into book format.

Even if you just used info and photos from the internet this would be a significant undertaking. I think to do this justice you would need high resolution, quality photos along with well researched information to go with it. I would want to see various views of the bike so I could see the significant/unique components that make it special. That gets to another subject--the subject e.g. all bicycles, just ballooners, road bikes, BMX, TOCs, etc... . Just researching and writing the short articles that I've done so far have taken anywhere from 10 to 30 hours and that is a single subject! I'll stick with 'massive'. V/r Shawn
 
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