Bicycle collecting

As with many consumer products, early bicycles were purchased solely for their usefulness or fashionableness and discarded as they wore out or were replaced by newer models. Some items were thrown into storage and survived, but many others went to the scrapyard. Decades later, those with an interest in cycling and history began to seek out older bikes, collecting different varieties. Like other forms of collecting, bike collectors can be completists or specialists, and many have extensive holdings in bike parts or literature, in addition to complete bicycles.

Due to the tremendous number of bicycle manufacturers and models that have appeared over the past 150 years, most collectors specialize in a particular style or period of bicycles. Currently, there are three primary periods of particular collector interest in North America, although many collectors will further specialize in the products of a single manufacturer or even examples of a single model within a given period. The major periods are:

...
Wikipedia