I think bikes that are entirely compatible with modern equipment will do better than those that aren't. Frames that will not do as well include those with non 700c wheels, and nutted brake calipers. I think 126 spans will generally be OK but not so sure about 120. Basically, if you can convert your bike to a retro STI-roadie, it'll do better.

Sites like this one will help keep C&V alive and grow. A few weeks ago, I was happy riding my Lemond with brifters. Then, I got my Schwinn Premis (purchased new in 1988) back on the road. That led me to searching the intenet and to this site. Now, I check the site daily and have purchased a 1982 Trek 614 (for me), another Trek 614 frame and parts (for my wife, want to try a build), an early 80s BMZ for my son and now a '85 Pinarello Montello (a bike I would have loved to have, but couldn't afford in the 1980s).

Harley-Davidson created Harley Owners Group (HOG) to keep riders active. They knew that if a rider was engaged, he would stay a long-term customer. Communities like this site that share interest and knowledge are a great way toward keeping people active in C&V. I would love to attend a C&V ride or swap meet to look at and talk (and ride) cool bikes. Those types of activities would help create and maintain interest as well.

I have noticed that the C&V forum here has more posts than any other section other than Road Cycling. It also typically has the 2nd most people "viewing" at any given time.

I think a lot of people like bikes that were new when they were kids. But I don't know how cool new bikes made in China today will be to the youngsters 20 from now. Guess we'll see.

I'll just point out that this observation of yours is not necessarily a sound one. This forum may indeed have the best vintage subforum, but perhaps this is not a popular forum to begin with. Without looking at numbers, here's another popular bike forum, but vintage is not well represented.

Road cycling forum - BikeRadar Forum

I'm not saying you're wrong, but the data you use to make your point doesn't necessarily prove it.

What? :foo:

I enjoy speculative threads so I will keep on commenting :D

I think he is saying that bf is not as popular for modern road bikes. But there are also other C&V type sites like the Cabe, CR, Retrobike all the FB and other app stuff. But the same goes for road. Then you have to factor age in. It might be that since the age of vintage collectors/riders is higher that they spend more time on this page as well since many are retired. FB goes almost 24/7 as the big page has everyone from all over the world posting. Some stuff comes up in Chinese and no one knows what it means but may like the pic. :lol:

I don't think this is anywhere near right. If you look at BikeRadar stats on their main page, their largest subforum by far has under 600K posts. BF has 9 subforums with more posts than that, and 4 of those with more than 1 million, including this one.

Number of threads/topics are also nowhere close. It looks, at least to me, that BF is considerably larger than that other "popular" site.

I had also made that same observation about C&V always appearing to be one of the more active forums here, and I agree that shows there is definitely interest.

This:
And one of the reasons I started this thread in the first place.

My crystal ball shows a few different trends.

First, the '70s-'80s bikes fall into two categories:

A) High-end steel road bikes. Demand and prices for these will fall, as Baby Boomers get too old for them. Eventually, as the Boomers start to die off, there will be a glut. A few of us Gen-Xers will be waiting gleefully outside your funerals to snap them up, but not many. :D

B) Low-end steel road bikes, along with 3-speeds and other city bikes. Demand and prices will remain steady or slightly increase, at least in big cities and college towns. There really weren't many bikes made, ca. 1990-2010, that can take their place as transportation machines.

As for '90s-'00s,

A) People my age (I'm 42) will start to pay more for bikes of their youth -- but road biking really wasn't a big thing in the '90s, so the demand will be mostly for high-end MTBs of that period. Road bikes of that period won't see much increase.

B) Mid-level MTBs (Specialized, Trek, GT, Giant) will hold steady.

Finally, the post-'05 steel-frame revival will dip before climbing again; my bet is that an '07 Surly or Kona or Salsa or Gunnar will start to appreciate around '27.

However, I don't think the post-'05 city-bike revival will yield much C&V interest; because people are actually buying those bikes for practical purposes, A) they're likely to ride them into the ground, and B) people won't have the sweet memories of recreational good times to go with them. So, if something like a '17 Priority Continuum is still on the road in '27, I doubt people will want to buy it over a '27 Priority Continuum.

Not quite, but closer. I didn't strictly say that bf is not as popular, but my implication was that, for his claim to be correct, then the popularity of all these forums is material. And up to that point in the thread, he didn't address this second relevancy.

I wrote: Without looking at numbers, here's another popular bike forum, but vintage is not well represented.

As well as: I'm not saying you're wrong, but the data you use to make your point doesn't necessarily prove it.

"Without looking at numbers" and "(doesn't) necessarily" are the key words. I wasn't motivated enough to start searching all the relevant, high-traffic bike forums to try to verify his claim. I was just saying that someone on a forum, saying that in "this" forum, "this" subforum is popular, ergo, the topic of the subforum must be popular to the larger community that comprises the entire forum topic, isn't by itself necessarily true. (maybe CV all come here, but EVERYONE ELSE goes elsewhere) That is the limit of what I wrote and that is the limit of my statement. And I think it, in the absence of any other context, is true.

For him to "demonstrate" that, subforum is popular in this forum therefore subforum topic is widely popular in a wider context, he needed to provide additional information. e.g. that this forum is also widely popular. I'm just saying that up until his post, that additional data was not there.

With robots, cybernetic power port.

I will gar-on-tee the numbers will not be there on Ratrodbikes.