OK, earlier this week I put in an impulse snipe bid on a Paramount. I had just picked up two, so I needed a third one, right? N+1 after all.

Anyway, I have been burned 100% of the time on bikes shipped by ebay sellers. In my limited experience, the sellers just don't know how to ship a bike. I tried to have a conversation with the seller, no reply. This was not looking good. And the seller only wanted $30 to ship ANYWHERE in the US. Lucky for him, I was not on the west coast (seller was in Kentucky).

The Fed Ex box was sitting on the front porch when I got home, wow, that was fast! Bought the bike Monday evening, and it arrived Thursday.

One side of the box looked great, although the center was bulging. Here we go again. Sure enough, there were parts sticking out the other side of the box. My main concern was the handlebars, as one brake lever was sticking out, and it looked like it had been slapped around a bit. Depending on how the handlebars were secured, I envisioned damage to either the top tube or the down tube.

Initial look in the box did not look good. The handlebars were loose in the box, no protection on the down tube at all, and just a packing blanket on the top tube. And the bars were resting on the frame tubes.

But somehow, a miracle. The bike was fine! And it was in much better condition than I thought. The picture is 10 minutes after arrival. Only thing I added were pedals and a saddle.

I will probably move the eight speed Shimano 105 STI group over onto this bike, and retire the donor (Fuji).

your picture isn't visible, but I'm glad to hear one finally worked out for you.

edit: pictures now showing.

OK, the tires don't match, and the black bar tape has to go, but it is pretty close to ride ready. Of course, step 1 is going to be strip it down and swap out everything. Front tire is the original Paramount racing tire.


1991 Schwinn Paramount, Series 3 (I think).

I'll step in Robbie's shoes and agree vehemetly with putting brifters on that bike.

I keep hoping I'll find one of these in my size someday. Good work! Also good to see it was packed well. It must've been a good deal for you to bother with it, since you've had poor luck with shippers in the past.

At least they used a bike box. My most recent ebay bike-buy showed up in a box cobbled together from 3 smaller ones and held together with approximately 1 mile of packing tape.

Miraculously no damage.

Well first off, nice bike. That thing's gonna be sweet with the 8sp STI group on it!

Secondly, since you've got 3 now (good job), are these things really that nice to ride or is it a matter of collector value? How do they compare to some of the other sought after bikes like the nicer Fuji's or Miyata's?

Isn't that a Panasonic? I thought a true "Paramount" was made in Waterford?

I had a well known collector send me a one-of-a kind bike from Switzerland for repair and the bike showed up with only 12" piece of cardboard with the shipping label taped to a bare frame. The rest of the packaging was completely gone.

From a prior thread, as I recall from Scooper, the Series 5 and Series 7 were Panasonics. The Series 3 was made in Taiwan. Eventually, the Series 2 and 3 moved to China production.

The ones I recently picked up were a 1986 Waterford, a 1992 Series 5, and this Series 3. I consider my 1987 Schwinn Prologue a precursor to the Series 5 and 7 Paramounts, as it was also made by Panasonic, had Tange Prestige frame, etc.


Its kind of funny, since I grew up not liking Schwinns at all, that my keeper fleet is rapidly becoming all Schwinn. I would not be surprised if I replace the rest of the fleet with Schwinns, probably Asian Schwinns.


To me, the Waterford is the potentially collectible bike, SLX tubing, all Dura Ace components. I don't see the Asian Paramounts as collectible, maybe they are, maybe they are not. I'll leave that to the experts. No way they have Waterford value for sure, but people like Paramounts. And the finish work on the Asian Paramounts is pretty good. I just consider them higher end Asian bikes, comparable to other high end bikes from that era.

My basic rule is I keep six bikes total, so if all three stay, three others from the keeper fleet will have to go.

The paint on this one is so good, that I know it will stay. There is very little/no wear on the bike period. I'll work on this one first, as I know the first bike to get bumped.

The email from Richard Schwinn is included in that post.

How does the waterford paramount ride compared to the panasonics?

Overall I have had good luck with some incredibly bad packing jobs. Glad you were lucky with this one!

With brifters, it will be a real sweet ride. I converted my 91 Waterford Paramount to RSX 7 speed brifters then to Shimano 600 8 speed brifters, I love it.

Super Sweet!

Dam, I want a Paramount!!

Sort of like the ablative heat shields on Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo spacecraft that burned away during re-entry.....

Way to play the eBay game!

Congrats on your finds, Bill. You may want to put some mileage on the series 3 before doing any cool modifications. Myself and others, have found the Series 2 and 3 bikes to be somewhat uninspiring. The Waterford and the Series 5 and 7, however, are probably nothing short of delightful! I would prefer a mid-late eighties Waterford to any of the earlier Paramounts.

Thanks for the insight. I have some choices right now for sure. Might just throw some brifters and a rear 8/9/10 speed wheel on there to test it out.

Is this another of your finds that were posted wrong ? You seem to have a knack for that.

I really like the panasonics I've seen. Even their lower end frames were nicely built, and the handmade top of the line ones were beautiful. We had a couple come through the bike coop, a Touring frame and a racing frame. Both too big, but I would have snapped up the tourer in a heartbeat if it had fit.

First, this was not exactly the deal of the century. I thought it was a pretty good deal, but not like some of the deals others have posted around here recently.

As far as this particular auction, seller did make a few mistakes.

First, this one was under: "Collectibles/Transportation/Bicycle/Bicycle Parts" category. If you did a general search by name (Paramount), you got it just fine. But if you were doing a search in the regular category: "Sporting Goods/Outdoor Sports/Cycling/Bicycles & Frames/Road Bikes", you would never find it. Even if you were searching in the collectibles area, most would not be looking for complete bikes in the "bicycle parts" category.

Another "mistake" was the scheduling of the auction. It ended Monday evening, 5PM PST. Monday is a bad day to end auctions, and 5PM is a bad time too (too early in the evening, anyone on the West Coast would be still at work, or driving home).

Description was sketchy too: "Sorry I don't know too much about this bike but picked it up because it was a Paramount." No details, pictures were OK, but not great, etc.

It was a VERY experienced seller, 13,800 feedback score. But 99.9% of what he sells is vintage Krate parts.

So this one had some posting issues, but not too bad.

But each minor mistake cuts down the competition. Get the size wrong, that cuts down some competition. Wrong category, ditto. No details, fewer yet. It all compounds, and eventually, can make quite a difference.

I can see how the seller got it in this category. Like I mentioned above, he mainly sells Krate/Stingray parts. That is the right category for those parts. I bet he just copied an old ebay listing of his, and edited it to reflect the Paramount. I do that myself all of the time. You just have to be really careful about some key details, like the category, shipping price, and so on. I have cost myself some $$ doing this on occasion. Usually I bungle the shipping, as I almost always do flat rate.

Lots of variance in ebay auction pricing. Deals come and go. Best not to fall in love with any single auction, and wait for a deal to come by.

I just purchased, FWIW, a very nice condition Fuji LifeCycle "10th Anniversary Edition" and it was mailed fast, extremely well packed and is a beautiful old bike. The price of $125 plus $75 shipping really made it not such an incredible deal but I'm living in eastern North Carolina, where bikes of any quality whatsoever are a rarity.

If you want to read something funny just take a look at what I've just posted to ebay. If I do say so myself, this is one brutally honest ebay listing:

https://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...#ht_2291wt_932

looks like it could use a oxalic bath and would be good to go...
Might have to bid on it.

Sure. I'm trying to be as brutally honest as possible though so as not to mislead bidders. That is an ebay first in my experience.

If I can pack the Raleigh and the ladies VolksCycle in the same box, it would be great, too. I still think there's a chance somebody may win a decent (not great) frame for a penny.

Maybe you can explain this "oxylic bath" to me? I have a couple of old single speeds from the 1930s in my attic that I kind of want to fix up too. Maybe not in this thread though.