Original Schwinn Krate Seat | eBay
All original schwinn krate lemon peeler seat. Correct for a 1968 lemon peeler. Seat has great color. Still soft. Has a small tear in the upper area where pictures show. Underneath has small tears but when on a stingray u dont see them. Seat with be packed correctly and insured to the lower 48...
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Since I buy and sell a lot of original Stingray chainguards and seats, I have been asked on a few occasions what is the most difficult to find original vintage Stingray seat. The seat just listed on Ebay above is not mine, I do not know who seller is, only that in my opinion I would say the above seat is the second hardest decent condition original Stingray seat to find, and here is my reasoning. A one year seat is always tough, and there have been a lot of them, however a one year seat that is color coded to the color of the bike is the toughest. A 1964 deep tufted deluxe solo polo, or a 65 white smoothie is tough, but these seats were used on all the color bikes one seat for all the bikes during the year. In my opinion the hardest to find would be a 68 Pea Picker seat as they came out toward the end of the year kind of after the Orange Apple and Lemon bikes, and like the lemon seat, I see very few of these ever come up for sale so that seat is in my opinion the toughest to find in original condition out there is the 68 Pea. The 68 Lemon I would say is just behind the Pea seat. The Orange and Apple 68 seats I have seen a few more of them and would say are slightly behind the Pea and Lemon seats, however ALL the Silver seats with colored stripe 68 Krate seats are a tough find in decent original condition. Now the 1971 Grey Ghost and 1973 Sunset Orange are also one year specific color seats. Now those are also tough to find, but I do see them come up for sale more than the 68 Krate seats, and the Cotton Picker seat is a two year seat but I think the numbers may have been low for both the Cotton and Grey Ghost. I bet they may have sold as many grey Ghosts in 1971 as they did Cotton's in 70 and 71 combined. The numbers for both bikes had to be low as they discontinued them both, and still kept the other 4 bikes for 1972, but dropping the Pea in 1973. I do not see a lot of boys choosing a white bike with a white seat, over a grey bike with a black seat. In my experience a nice original Cotton Picker which is a two year bike is tougher to find than a nice original Grey Ghost or Sunset Orange Krate. Now I have never seen production numbers for the different colored bikes, they may be out there somewhere but I have never seen one. I do remember seeing I think production numbers per year for the different models made during the year, but not broken down to colors. I have to think that in 1968 for sure the Orange Krate outsold the other colors by far, that was the iconic Raceway ad with the Kid on that funky drum braked front wheeled bike. You see that bike in the color Boys life ad, that is what you wanted when you went down to the dealer. I will even go so far as to say that each year during the Krate runs that the Orange Krate was the #1 color sold. So here are my rankings for tough to find decent original Stingray Seats, #1 being the toughest to find. Now of course this is just my opinion on all this (opinion sounds a lot better than guess). Any thoughts by anyone else.
#1 1968 Pea Picker
#2 1968 Lemon Peeler
#3 1968 Apple Krate
#4 1968 Orange Krate
#5 Cotton Picker Seat
#6 Grey Ghost Seat Seat
#7 Sunset Orange Seat
