Vintage bikes come in two varieties: totally refurbished and ready to ride and projects. Projects are really best suited for owners willing, able and ready to do all the work themselves. Otherwise, an "expensive" ready to ride bike can be a better (cheaper) deal.

You can take a sweet $30 thrift store find and turn it into a $200 bike by either doing the work yourself (and spending about $40 in parts) or paying a bike shop $250 to do the work. The work isn't that difficult, but takes time and some special tools.

As far as the search of this forum, be sure to search by "relevance", its on the left side of the page, about half way down. Then the search works OK.