Rarer than a Girl’s BPH?
With all the talk about the rarity and potential value of the Girl’s Blue Phantom, a limited edition color and trim variant of a common frame, this bike is not getting its due!
This blend of “C” and “D” models does not appear in the collected catalogs, brochures, and factory letters of the Hurd book and without documentation, it is hard to know what designation Schwinn may have given it or the actual year of production.
I doubt this frame is as early as 1936 because although curved down tubes were offered beginning in 1936 on the top of the line Autocycle frames, they were something of a “trickle-down” feature, not reaching the DX line until 1940.
My original guess was that this was a Schwinn frame variant designed to use up an overstock of C-model tanks after that standard frame had been generally discontinued (1936 and 1937 with the tank, depicted through 1939 without the tank.) The C model tank also appears on the earliest DX frames of late 37 (and assumedly early 1938) but this frame is a dinosaur with straight seat stays (hints of Moto-Balloon B-9/10 about it.)
Using the “lets get rid of old stock” explanation and placing the build in late 1939/1940/1941 would explain the anachronism of the early tank on what is essentially a 1940 style DX frame with a straight rather than curved lower top tube. The Mead name on the bike would cause me to place it later rather than earlier in this time line because Mead was generally known as Schwinn’s closet cleaner.
Based on all of that, my inclination was to date the bike to approximately 1940 or maybe 1941.
The serial number is the best source for narrowing things down against pure deduction and speculation of course those numbers are not truly available in factory purity so it still gives up to some speculation.
By the table I have found, the serial number B55235 could be for either 1937 or 1939 depending on the font size of the stamping, earlier bikes using a small font and later bikes using what was essentially the same size as postwar units.
If I am correct in my date assumption for this frame then the saddle may be fairly appropriate for the bike and if you are searching for a Mead style tubular rack for this bike I believe the frame is too late to use one.