Saturday, June 27, 2015

Sullivan Motorcycle Collection

I've posted stuff on the Sullivan Collection a a few times in the past. 
 
 
Evidently Bobby Sullivan has decided it's time to downsize and portions of the collection are being sold at the Mecham's Auction in Harrisburg Pennsylvania.  From the Mecham's website:

Owner of Sullivan’s Inc. and a prolific collector of Triumph motorcycles, Bobby Sullivan is in a league of his own among motorcycle enthusiasts. His collection of Triumphs spanned every year from 1936 through 1972 and comprised more than a hundred various models at its peak in size. What makes Sullivan and his collection especially unique, aside from its obvious depth and breadth, is the way it came to be. Most of the bikes that spent time as part of Sullivan’s collection were products of ground-up nut-and-bolt restorations using original, factory-correct and NOS parts whenever possible, which for a collection of this magnitude and vintage is an extraordinary feat.


 “We’d put the bikes together the same way any good Triumph shop would. We’d inspect everything, replace anything that didn’t look right, and then lubricate the parts during the assembly,” explains Sullivan. “We didn’t put oil in them because the seals would swell up, and then they’d start to drip.”
 
Sullivan eventually ran out of the space needed to house the bikes in his collection. “When you can’t walk into your conference room ‘cause it’s full of motorcycles, you got a problem,” he says. “When you go downstairs or out back and you can’t move because it’s full of motorcycles, you got a problem. When you do a photo shoot and it takes four hours to move the bikes out for the shoot, and then a couple of hours more to do the shoot, you got too much stuff.”

Over the past couple years, Sullivan has worked to find suitable buyers for his motorcycles, and has been successful in selling many. But selling motorcycles as fine as his is a huge undertaking, especially when dealing with such a large amount. Having worked with MidAmerica and Mecum Auctions in the past, Sullivan felt that utilizing their auction platform would be an excellent way to send off a select portion of his elaborate collection. A total of 15 of Sullivan’s motorcycles will be offered at the second-annual Mecum MidAmerica Harrisburg Motorcycle auction, August 2. Don’t miss the opportunity to claim a small part of Sullivan’s art as your own as it crosses the block at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex and Expo Center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Incidenally it appears the Mecham's Motorcycle Auction in Harrisburg will be televised as a part of the regular NBCSN coverage 7/31/2015 - 8/02/2015.

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