There may not have been many dealers. As I said above, I had to travel 100 miles to find one. I mowed a lot of lawns at $2.50 to $3.00 each to buy that thing. It was either a really nice bike or an old POS car and I chose the bike. No one in my neighborhood had anything even close. It was like a Ferrari among Pintos. My friends didn't even understand how somebody could pay that much for a bike but then, they didn't understand why I left them in the dust every time we rode either. I had a Sears Free Spirit 10-speed that I had bought before this also with lawn mowing money (my parents did not believe in spoiling us with "luxuries". They bought me exactly one bike. A single speed 26" balloon tired Sears that was to last me my entire childhood. It got stolen when I was 12 and that was that.) I thought I would keep the Free Spirit and use it for rough and dirt roads. I rode the SG for a couple of hundred miles and then one day I went to go on a ride I though the Free Spirit was more appropriate for. Going from a 24lb, Reynolds framed, sewup equipped bike back to the 45lb truck tired Sears bike was like getting out of the aforementioned Ferrari and back into a Pinto. I rode it down the driveway, back up the driveway and hung a for sale sign on it. Sold it a few weeks later.