I found one of these at a garage sale on my street. It is a BMX bike apparently from the mid to late 90s. What is it worth?
I found one of these at a garage sale on my street. It is a BMX bike apparently from the mid to late 90s. What is it worth?
Jack E36 M3.
Well, somebody could have told me before I bought it.
Next time try this before making any purchases: http://tinyurl.com/yabr7qt
Shawn
Trans_Maro wrote: Next time try this before making any purchases: http://tinyurl.com/yabr7qt Shawn
Funny how the first result is this thread.
In reply to bamalama:
Yeah, I couldn't find much info on it or any others for sale. I think it will be fine for my intended purpose. I was about to buy a WalMart special for $79 for my nine year old daughter as she has outgrown her 16" wheeled bike. The only offroading it will see is if she accidentally goes off the sidewalk.
I paid $20 for it. I spent the afternoon with some chrome polish and some grease and it actually looks pretty good. The wheels are in perfect true and the brakes work great, so it is already two up on her old WalMart bike.
Ex-bike shop guy here.
They had zero BMX credibility but were built to a pretty high standard. No one wants one but they're functional kids bikes with lots of life left.
In reply to motomoron:
That is pretty much what I wanted to hear. I was just looking for build quality better than what you get from the new big box stores.
what motomoron said...pretty much any functional name brand bike from the 90s > ANY WALMART/TARGET/KMART BIKE EVVAAAARRR
ex shop guy here too, and I loathe and despise the crummy e36m3 that comes from big boxes. I guess in order for there to be good stuff, someone has to set the backmarker for the good stuff to be better than. Its just that too many parents buy an $11 bike from wallyworld and when it falls apart from putting the kickstand down too hard, they are instantly turned off to bicycling-as-sport for their kids, and instead buy them an xbox and subsidize insulin manufacturers...
sorry that degraded fast...sometimes its hard to let stuff go
WalMart has Mongoose BMX bikes for $190 now, but I can't imagine they are anywhere is good of quality as the entry level bike shop BMXers at $220 or so. In any case, I am really happy with my $20 Trek.
In reply to Otto_Maddox:
The 90's TREK 20" non coaster brake BMX models were not very good when compared with the more BMX oriented companies offerings of the era, however, unless your daughter is an agressive rider it should be fine for her. Although TREK makes a lot of awesome bikes we refused to sell those particular models of TREK BMX race style and freestyle bikes because they were not comparable to the entry level Redlines, GTs, Dynos, etc at the same price points.
The original Mongoose company is gone and lives on in name only on garbage sold in big box stores along with several other brand names like once considered high quality bike companies. If you see a particular brand of bike in a big box store it's a pretty good bet it's not a good bike.
Starting in the mid 90's my store policy was not to work on bikes from big box stores. They're not safe and I wasn't willing to accept the liability associated with us servicing them should someone get hurt on them because of initial poor quality parts, parts incompatiblity, or original "in store" assembly. If someone gets hurt on a bike due to any mechanical malfunction, the first thought now is that it must be the fault of the last person who worked on the bike. We never had a case but I saw what was happening to other shops.
Check the tires for dry rot since the bike is from the 90's and replace if you see any cracking. Hopefully you will spend more than 20 bucks on a helmet properly sized and adjusted for her at a bike shop. Do not buy a helmet in a big box store no matter what name is on it
Owned a big bike shop for 25 years. Rode race, street and ramp BMX bikes for about 20 years and still ride but more mountain and road.
i agree with rad capz about quality, but you limit yourself severely when you refuse to work on brand X. not a smart call, and you lost out on a lot of business. In the bicycle shop business, your largest margin comes in from service, not sales...very similar to car lots. We made a decent living tuning up crap bikes from the big boxes. Its all shimano/suntour subcomponents anyway - same stuff thats on the shop OEMs anyway, but youre right, its almost always built poorly, hence a great place to get service customers.
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