[CR] Where do old frames go to die?

(Example: Production Builders:Teledyne)

From: "Bob Hanson" <theonetrueBob@webtv.net>
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2006 10:09:19 -0600
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: [CR] Where do old frames go to die?


Where do old frames go? Answer: Mexico

Actually, I had a distressing talk with one local shop owner recently. He'd had one of his prized personal bikes stolen when it as grabbed from just inside the doorway of his shop one day. He'd notified the police and a few other local bike shops just in case the crack-head thief thought to try to sell it to a bike shop quickly. Unfortunately, the local police are not interested in recovering stolen bikes. In fact, they have literally thousands of unclaimed stolen bikes or ones seized in drug raids accumulate every year. My eyebrows raised at this thought because I know there are annual police auctions. Well, unfortunately, the auctions are for not one bike but are just for large random batches. A buyer will makes an offer on a lot of perhaps 200 to 500 bicycle-like objects as if they were buying scrap metal. Nobody bothers to actually catalog what bikes have been recovered or later sold. Recovered bikes are logged into police files simply as "1 bicycle", And it would also be virtually impossible to even get near your bike before an auction to identify it, claim it, or even buy it back, even if you could clearly prove via serial number that you were the owner. So, the huge stockpiles of bikes are all just sold off to a handful of bulk-lot auction buyers who have absolutely no interest in bikes. They just throw them into what are basically big dump trucks and haul them off... to Mexico. What later happens to them once they reach their destination is unknown.

I now know exactly what I'm going to bitch about the next time I receive a phone call asking for cash contributions for the annual police fund raiser. But, I'll still offer to buy bullets for the police, providing they agree use them more often.

Bob Hanson, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA