ccmoose

Welcome to the Collectors Corner. Each month a different collection will be
showcased for your viewing pleasure. The featured collector is Philip aka Moose
from vintagebmx.com. Be sure to share your comments or questions about his
collection on the message board or his email philip.santi@ntlworld.com

It all started in October 2003 with a 1980 black prismatic
Raleigh Chopper. A member of our family asked me to
find out what it was worth and to sell it, so, after looking
around the Internet I put it on eBay and sold it for less
than I thought it was worth. I should have bought it for
myself. Whilst looking for Chopper prices on eBay, I saw
some BMX stuff and then stumbled across VBMX as well
as some other websites. After looking in the VBMX
museum, I was hooked.

I was never any good at riding when I was a kid, I
never raced and I was too impatient to learn all
the freestyle tricks. I could do endo's, front and
backhops, rockwalks etc but that was about it
and so I made a conscious decision to just
collect rather than try and learn to ride at the
age of 30. We didn't have much in the way of
money when I was a kid and both of the BMX's I
owned back then would probably be considered
'department store rubbish'. I remember the first
'real' BMX I really lusted after was a TA, a kid on
my estate had one. Later on, a couple of other
kids got Haro's, DP's, Curtis freestylers and GT
Pro performers. Looking back, because I was
crap at riding, I think it was always about the
bikes, even back then.

Now, I am slowly starting to collect all of the
freestyle bikes I wished I'd had as a kid. My first
purchase was, (surprise, surprise), a green
streetbeat, funnily enough, this is the f&f I wanted
the most as a kid (I think because no one I knew
had one). From there, my collection has grown but
I still haven't spent big bucks on any one single
item like hutch pedals or aerospeeds. Don't get me
wrong, I'd love to own these items, but they hold no
real importance to my collection as no-one I knew
as a kid ran with them.

I now have 3 streetbeats, the green '85 is complete,
I have just finished restoring the White/Grey '86 and
the Grey/Red '86 needs the forks painted. There
are 4 Haro's, 2 NOS Red '85 FST's, a partly
restored '88 Sport and an ' 88 FSX that needs
restoring. The Hutch Windstyler frame is an '87(?),
the forks are almost exactly the same as the '88
Windstyler forks but have a longer steerer, I'll
probably cut these to fit as I won some Windstyler
forks on ebay but it doesn't look like they're going to
get here (ever). The Raleigh Styler is complete. I
bought it to restore but I've decided to sell it as I
need to concentrate on my other bikes. The white
DP firebird was my first complete build and it's just
'so cool' (imho)!

Pride of place in my collection goes to
the gjs freestyler - as far as I can gather,
it's an early one. It looks like gjs took an
A frame and just welded on the pegs and
a platform. I believe it was later they
changed to square chainstays as my
frame number is lower than that of one I
know of with square chainstays. You can
see from the picture that it was originally
sold by OT cycles in Dartford (UK) and
there's a sneaky peek at the colour
scheme I'm going to use.

There's also an '86 Kuwahara Bravo KT
that's currently at the powder coaters.

I do have most of the parts to make all of
these complete bikes but I'm still looking for
Grey tuff II's, Grey skinwall tyres, gold power
disc and red odyssey 2000 brakes. Any help
would be much appreciated.

It's not a very big collection, but I'm happy
with the way it's coming along and hopefully,
by the end of the Autumn, there will be a
group picture of complete bikes instead of
just f&f sets.