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Who manufactured this Elgin?
- Thread starter dougfisk
- Start date
Hey Bri, I was coming out of the bottle anyway… you didn’t need to give yourself a rug burn rubbing so hard!
This very bike is shown as the Elgin Swallow in the Spring/Summer 1935 Sear catalog. The frame is the standard lady’s model produced by H.P. Snyder at that time but in the catalog it is shown with the more typical, Snyder style, multi-plate crowned fork. Other Snyder bicycles have turned up in the hobby with a single forged plate crown that does look similar (at the least) to the forks used on many Shelby products. I’ve never had the two together, next to each other, to compare so the final call is yet to be made on how similar these are, and if they are identical, what it means.
Tangentially, both the girls and boy’s Moto-Ballons in that catalog appear to be illustration of Snyder built bikes and a number of Snyder built Elgin Moto-Balloons have surfaced. It is likely that Westfield and Snyder were both supplying Sears with Moto-balloons at that time and for whatever reason, the Snyders were the ones that made it into the catalog illustrations for S/S-35.
It is also known that at least two other manufacturers produced Moto-Balloons for Sears. Emblem Mfg., and the manufacturer of yesterdays dearly departed; the best surviving (well, until yesterday) example of the three of that specific type I have seen/recorded to date.
This very bike is shown as the Elgin Swallow in the Spring/Summer 1935 Sear catalog. The frame is the standard lady’s model produced by H.P. Snyder at that time but in the catalog it is shown with the more typical, Snyder style, multi-plate crowned fork. Other Snyder bicycles have turned up in the hobby with a single forged plate crown that does look similar (at the least) to the forks used on many Shelby products. I’ve never had the two together, next to each other, to compare so the final call is yet to be made on how similar these are, and if they are identical, what it means.
Tangentially, both the girls and boy’s Moto-Ballons in that catalog appear to be illustration of Snyder built bikes and a number of Snyder built Elgin Moto-Balloons have surfaced. It is likely that Westfield and Snyder were both supplying Sears with Moto-balloons at that time and for whatever reason, the Snyders were the ones that made it into the catalog illustrations for S/S-35.
It is also known that at least two other manufacturers produced Moto-Balloons for Sears. Emblem Mfg., and the manufacturer of yesterdays dearly departed; the best surviving (well, until yesterday) example of the three of that specific type I have seen/recorded to date.
Adamtinkerer
Riding a '38 Autocycle Deluxe
About the same as my Hawthorne Dolly Varden I picked up around this time last year.
