rustystrings61 

THAT is a big part of it for me. The issue sometimes is finding the next caretaker ...

In the '90s I collected vintage military rifles, because they were cheap and I liked them. I spent a lot of time out at the local range puttering with all of these assorted bolt-actions, poking holes in paper and then cleaning and polishing them. There were several that required haunting gun shows ot find original stocks and handguards and bands to restore them to original condition. Shortly before I got married, I had a closet packed with assorted Lee Enfields, Mausers in all the standard service calibers from around the world, Mosin Nagants with the Czarist double-headed eagle crest that had been rebuilt by the Finns after the Winter War, assorted bayonets and bandoliers, etc. I wound up selling the lot to a vintage arms dealer for enough money to remove the need for mortgage insurance on our first house. I at least knew they were going to someone who would sell them responsibly to people who would treat them as historical artifacts. The only arms remaining now are a .22 target pistol and a basic 9mm carry piece, both low maintenance and modern and utterly functional with zero collectibility factor. They're tools and nothing more.

My foray into the great vintage guitar catch-and-release program started even earlier, in the early '80s. Through the years I had a couple of hundred guitars and amps flow through my hands, sometimes for pure wheeler-dealer purposes, other times as part of the quest for Excalibur. Many of those instruments and amps came to me in basket-case condition and I had them restored to functionality, along the way resuscitating otherwised junked stuff to grail status. I had guitars from 1930-1975, and a few of them, if I had them today, I could buy a house with. They came and they went, and the largest cases of when they went were when I sold multiple guitars at once to an associate who collected so that I could purchase what I thought would be a new "lifetime" guitar, and the remaining stuff (vintage archtops and a '30 National Duolian steel guitar) to fund the purchase of my Rivendell. The money in vintage guitars got too crazy for me, and today I have ONE guitar that I bought new - it has all the elements of the vintage ones but it's mine, and every time I play it I smile and I always feel sad when it's time to return it to its case.

But the BIKES. That is a challenge for me. I get attached to them, because I always wind up taking them down to the frame and rebuilding them. Worse yet, where would they go if I sold them? Pre-pandemic, it was feasible to sell them via this forum, but shipping costs have pretty much done for that. So I have to figure something else out. As it stands, I have been paying for a storage unit for almost a year to house bikes I am not riding - but that stash includes my Mercian Colorado, which was the first bike I rode after my heart attack. There's an old Cannondale ST that I keep thinking I want to reconfigure for loaded cycle camping. There's a Lighthouse built by Tim Neenan that I have never built up that would likely make a great all-roads derailleur bike. I guess the others there could go, but then there are six more in my apartment, and what to do about those? My Mercian fixed-gear is my most-ridden bike; the ratty Gitane TdF fixed-conversion is my favorite grab-n-go bike ever; the Raleigh Competition with the funky Dingle Drive is my dirt-roads bike; my '76 Puch was bought for me new in '78, sold in '87 and relocated in '19, and it stays. The '88 Specialized Sirrus is its own delight, and the '88 Centurion LeMans just feels so natural, punching way above its weight for a rat bike purchased for $35.

If I could wait and take my time, I would probably hit that point of naturally choosing to send some on, but the sensation that I MUST move to do something is the hitch for me.