Re: [CR]Wastyn - was: Pre-War track Paramount on ebay

(Example: Production Builders:Teledyne)

To: GPVB1@cs.com
From: "Steven L. Sheffield" <stevens@veloworks.com>
Subject: Re: [CR]Wastyn - was: Pre-War track Paramount on ebay
Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 16:10:53 -0500

At Tuesday, 26 November 2002, GPVB1@cs.com wrote:
>
>This bike looks a whole lot like my chrome 1937 Emil Wastyn, which we
>initially thought might possibly have been a Paramount. The serial number is
>way different than mine, although Oscar Jr. told me that Emil would often put
>whatever the customer wanted (on the BB shell) as a serial number, or the
>date the frame was completed, or sometimes even nothing.... Would "A553" be a
>typical early Paramount S/N?

From http://www.waterfordbikes.com/velorotica/fsn.php:

Dating Your Waterford or US-Built Paramount

The Earliest Serial Numbers

The very first Paramounts seemed to have had serial numbers starting with "A" followed by two or three digits. This seems to have been a system started by Emil Wastyn. We found a very early Paramount - claimed to be a 1938-9 vintage - with serial number A545.

Serial numbers then followed a three-digit format - particularly after World War II. Unfortunately, an office fire in 1948 destroyed the Paramount records.

By early 1959, serial number 949 had been reached, necessitating a new system.

--

Steven L. Sheffield stevens at veloworks dot com veloworks at mac dot com aitch tee tea pea colon [for word] slash [four ward] slash double-you double-yew double-ewe dot veloworks dot com [four word] slash bellum pax est libertas servitus est nescio robur est