Hummer

Recently a friend asked me to help get an old bicycle from a department store ready to ride again. The bicycle had a a marquee name on it but nothing to indicate which department store. I did some checking and determined that it was from Simpsons-Sears.

In the course of this exercise I looked through the serial number data that I had collected over the years for Simpsons-Sears bicycles. Over these same years I have become better at identifying serial number formats.

I have an old Simpsons-Sears bicycle that when I first acquired it I could not identify the serial number. The head badge says "Made in Japan". From the style of the headbadge I guessed that the date of the bicycle was late 1960s. What was confusing was the Sears numbers stamped into the BB close to the manufacturers serial number.


Upon looking at the serial number again I now know that the format is from the manufacturer Miyata.
The "Z" at the start of the serial number is for the year 1971.


Who knew that I had a Miyata in my garage? Sometimes department store bicycles are better than you give them credit for.
This bicycle rides very nicely so I was never tempted to part with it.