How many do you reckon…. ?Don’t include bikes ridden as a kid, just bikes you saved for and bought with your hard earned.
A rough count not including bikes owned as a kid theres been for me 27 road bikes and 23 mountain bikes…. Many I wish I still owned but I’m slowly finding/building these one again and here’s a recent photo of them…
Crikey, had a little think about this and it gets quite embarrassing. Always been into bikes since late secondary school, paper round and weekend job money was either spent on bikes or football stuff.
I reckon by the time I'd hit 18 I'd had at least 20 bikes. Considering my family were not well off, it was my hard earned or wheeling and dealing that got me to this point. Started off with some low end Peugeot racing bikes (Aelle I think), had a couple, tinkered, resprayed, learned to spanner bikes on these.
Had a Raleigh Cajun 531 framed MTB, arguably my first proper mountain bike, well even bike tbh. A 531 frames Raleigh racing bike (red, white, yellow and blue, quite nice actually) which I built up myself mostly with 105sc. A giant I saved up and bought with full dx (stolen), another giant MTB which I traded for a lovely Peugeot aravis 531 framed 105 shod racing bike (Stolen), a 501 framed Peugeot racer in purple and white splatter with 500ex (leant to a mate, never saw again), and then my GT RTS-2.
Then followed a lean period, just the RTS for a while, found retrobike and since then I've really lost count.
I've ashamedly got around 20 lurking in my garage and shed at the moment, I've probably had near double figures in RTS bikes alone, still have 2, my team which is my keeper, and another USA built frame which is sat awaiting building after having it converted to disc. Double figures in amp or variations of them (got 3 still), a gator fade Klein, a yo eddy, various dyna-techs, a pace rc200 F3, dbr axis TT X2 (still have 1), and many more.
As a long conscious process, that is, choosing the model, saving, and then buying, just 2.
However, I now live in Germany, a paradise for used bikes, so I'm constantly flipping, fixing, keeping, then selling, donating, swapping for another, getting bikes for non-cyclist friends, for my kids, etc. Of all the bikes I sell, I keep a picture in a folder of the ones I used for the Classifieds. This folder now says there are 67 pictures.
As a long conscious process, that is, choosing the model, saving, and then buying, just 2.
However, I now live in Germany, a paradise for used bikes, so I'm constantly flipping, fixing, keeping, then selling, donating, swapping for another, getting bikes for non-cyclist friends, for my kids, etc. Of all the bikes I sell, I keep a picture in a folder of the ones I used for the Classifieds. This folder now says there are 67 pictures.
I really wish I'd kept a photographic record of the more unusual bikes through the shop, or anything worth over a weeks wages.
I've got descriptions of all of them written in purchase ledgers, but that's not the same
OK the executive summary is I have no idea but more than 200, probably just over 300. Still have 40.
The longer version is:
It started in 1959 with a Triang trike which my brother took apart telling me he would make it into a swing...I tended not to trust him after that.
I then inherited a nameless bike from my brother that I kept until I was 11, it was too big when I first got it and way too small when I finally got rid of it after riding it 6 miles a day to school for several months, aged 11.
My dad bought me a Carlton Cobra in 1967 that I kept until I started riding motorbikes at 16, then no more bikes until 1991 when I got a Rockhopper that I still have.
Four kids meant a few bikes came and went over the next few years but I'm not counting those.
I retired early in the early 2000s and started buying bikes to ride, getting bored with them, selling them and buying another... all second-hand.
I kept a spreadsheet for some of this time, and a quick count of the bikes listed there reaches 187. This by no means includes all of my bikes and I'd say misses up to about 100 or so that came and went.
I still have about 40 bikes in the garage today that I am trying desperately to thin down...but then someone here posts a message about something like the 97 Lavadome last week, "Only 70 quid, someone has to buy it!" ...yes and it was me and it is a beautiful thing worth perhaps three times what I paid, but it is too small for me!
Sometimes I have set myself a challenge, someone gave me a knackered old Ridgeback and I thought it would be fun to see if I could fix it up, sell it, use the money to buy another bike, sell etc and trade up to a top range carbon fibre road bike. It's all on the spreadsheet.
Ridgeback
Carrera
Specialized
Boardman
Cube Peleton
Felt Gravel
After I sold the Felt gravel bike I'd made enough money to buy a mint 2006 Specialized Tarmac Pro with full Dura Ace and reached my target in about a month. I still have the Tarmac today hanging on my wall, I don't ride it because it is in mint condition and I don't want to damage it...really, silly, I know. When I did ride it I really enjoyed it but it is too hilly around here for my old legs at the 52/39 chainset with 28 tooth on the rear and that's the max the groupset will cope with.
It's all been great fun though, kept me off the streets and has not cost me a penny over 200 odd years. No regrets!
Some of the bikes I have in my collection today...
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