Eric H.’s 1985 Sears Free Spirit

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Eric H. has the honor of bookending our week of Huffrrays. This is his 1985ish Sears Free Spirit. I can’t help but notice an uncanny resemblance to G. Lyell’s AMF, but what the AMF has for accessories, the SFS counters with the finest color-matched Pantleg Saver I’ve ever witnessed!
1985 Sears Free Spirit

1985 Sears Free Spirit10 speeds and a color-matched chain guard, does it get any better?

About a month back I was at my favorite Goodwill store here in Portland and saw this nice Free Spirit circa 1985 bike with 26″ wheels. A friend of mine had previously told me that if I saw something nice for her to just nab it and she’d pay me back, so I bought the bike for $25, which is a very good price in the local bike market. This bike is immaculate except for a scratch on the front chainring, needed nothing but air in the tubes to be ridable.

My friend kept it 2 weeks but the wasn’t her cup of tea so she asked me if I wanted to buy it back. Having kept abreast of the local OTS market via craigslist, I bought back the bike in order to flip it. I spent about 1/2 hour cleaning the bike and lubing the chain, then posted it on craigslist for $100, which seemed about right. Calls started coming in at 8AM the next day, and I sold the bike as soon as I got home from work. One person called and promised me $150 if I were to ‘hold’ it for her an extra hour, but I felt it best just to take the 1st $100 cash I could get. $75 profit for less than an hour’s work was OK to me.

This is the 1st time I actually ‘flipped’ a bike, and it was strange. It’s pretty amazing how much people in Portland are willing to pay for an old used ten speed, I don’t know what to make of it. Just in the last 3 months prices have gone up dramatically. This is a bike crazy town, that is for sure, but I’d like to know if other places are seeing similar phenomena.

Based on comparisons with similar bikes and based on the fact the the Shimano shifter had the ‘Positron’ system, a sort of early indexed shifter, I estimate this bike coming from about 1985, which is the year Micheal J. Fox made ‘Back to the Future.’ The bike seemed to run fine, the ‘Positron’ seemed to work well, but I don’t really trust a test ride that is under 5 miles, so I will never know if this bike was really any good. I didn’t want a 10 speed with 26″ wheels, so that’s the way it goes.

Peace, have a good day.

-Eric H.
Portland, Oregon

Thanks Eric

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  • Edward

    I stopped at a yard sale recently and found two bikes that I would have bought at $20 or less. The seller had them priced at $100 each! They put “vintage bike” on the tags. I left them my number and said I’d pay $20 each when they were ready to get rid of them.

    Two days later, the bikes were up on Craigslist. One, a beat-up Takara, was still at $100. The other, a Motobecane mixte, also very chipped and rusted, was priced at $175!

  • Hugh

    I hear you Edward.I really love it when someone see`s a fully restored bike for sale. And through some twisted logic they figure their un-restored one must be worth the same amount. Never mind the 30 year old gum walls that are hard as a rock. Or the seized-up derailleurs and the rusty cables. It`s a classic for God`s sake! It must be worth a fortune!