Vintage Bicycle Value: Chrome

Video Transcript

"Most finished bicycles have got chrome on them. Whether it's the rims, the handle bars, the stem, many parts are chrome. And a lot of times chrome will have rust on it. And you have to decide when it's bad enough to re-chrome, which is very expensive, or at least how you clean up the chrome and get the most out of it. Now a lot of the chrome on these bikes is actually very good quality. When you first look at it, you see the rust, you might not realize how clean it can get. So here I've got a light mount. So this is a mount from a Raleigh that would go on the front of the bike and you'd attach a light to it. And you can see it's got rust. Now some people might replace this part or try to find a new one or a new old stock part, but this will clean up very nicely. And the first thing is if you use bronze wool, you don't want to use steel wool because that will scratch the chrome. But if you just start cleaning it like this with bronze wool, you'll see the color start to come out, the rust will come off and you'll have great chrome underneath. There are finishes that you can put on this. I won't go into those details now. But before you reject a bike, if you're looking at a bike but you don't want to make an offer because the chrome isn't any good, well just think about what it would be like if you started cleaning it up."