Catalog collectors, reveal yourselves!
 

So someone asks about a small '56 Raleigh, and...tada!...Neal Learner produces a matching Raleigh Space Rider catalog page. Someone mentions a Browning bike and...tada!...Scooper instantly produces a 1973 Browning ad from a Boy's Life Magazine. I know (from personal usage) miamijim has made available a large collection of Peugeot catalogs. For some reason I'd bet T-Mar either has an astounding photographic memory, or a vast reference library (or both!).

Who supplements their bike & parts collections with catalogs and other reference materials? What do you have? Where did/do you get them? Any other thoughts, tips, etc. regarding catalog procurement?

And why are some catalogs so hard to come by? I would think that nearly every catalog should be available somewhere, but apparently that's not the case.

(Forgive my ignorance on this topic. I don't own a single catalog, though I often find myself looking through scanned catalogs online and I've grown to appreciate those who have helped to preserve them.)

Catalogs are incredibly valuable to me. But, depending on the marque, it's not as easy to find them as you might think, especially if the company no longer exists. Over the last few years, I've managed to scrape together a total of 5 Gloria catalogs, all but one donated by sympathetic collectors. I have yet to find any on eBay.com or ebay.it (Italy).

Me too "save" catalouges. Mainly swedish and I cover from the 50´s onwards. Must contain road bikes. An early 80´s Batavus is quite special.

I, too, seek catalogs but not because I have any desire to collect them. I use them on my website and I am constantly seeking more. As I find them, I will put them up on MY "TEN SPEEDS".

If anyone wants to share Canadian catalogs and have them posted, let me know. I would be happy to publish what you have on my website.
http://www.mytenspeeds.com/My_TenSpe...one_Pg_111.jpg

I'm not a catalogue collector, but I sure would want to get my hands on this one:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y44...Vitus-book.jpg
....if anyone out there has one they might sell to me??:rolleyes:

Chombi

I have these: http://www.cyclespeugeot.com/Catalogs.html

And another 20 that arent listed plus an autographed Merckx catalog, 5 Colnago, 3 Bridgestone, Cycles Benjamin, Miami Cycles and few others.

http://i495.photobucket.com/albums/r...erckx/EMC1.jpg

Which Colnago catalogs do you have, MJ? I have to tell you that I've found your Peugeot catalogs to be invaluable on many, many occasions! Are you planning to add those other 20 that you mention? Or the Colnagos?

Raleigh and Peugeot catalogs for me, still have some major gaps to fill. In my opinion collecting them is worthless and selfish, unless they are available for research online. Proud to say that every one of the Raleigh catalogs I have managed to collect I have scanned and made available.

The best collection of older bike catalogs that I know of, can be found here: http://bulgier.net/pics/bike/Catalogs/

I've never owned a single catalog but you can bet that if I ever came up with something not already out there I'd make it available. For now I just keep a local copy of everything I find online and "make the rounds" about every six months. I just checked and, ridiculously, my saved catalog collection comprises 9,613 individual files.

Miami Cycles - a local shop?

-Kurt

The Colnago are from 2000-2005 or so and yes, I'll be adding all of my catalogs. Here are few samples of what I have:

http://i495.photobucket.com/albums/r...527/975a_1.jpg
http://i495.photobucket.com/albums/r...527/46c8_1.jpg
http://i495.photobucket.com/albums/r.../Benjamin1.jpg

I own a bunch of Raleigh catalogs from the 1930s to the 1980s, but mostly I link to Mark Bulgier's site as noted above or to RetroRaleigh:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/retroraleighs/#catalogues

Neal