Two Columbia Bicycle Purchase Guarantees
Westfield, MA: Westfield Manufacturing Company, 1950. Very Good +. Item #46727
Westfield, MA: Westfield Manufacturing Company, [1950 & 1954]. Two printed broadsheets measuring 18x13cm and 13x21cm. Publisher’s cardstock with yellow background, decorative green borders, and black text. Each sheet hole-punched at top margin; one retaining black thread. Sheets bumped lightly along edges and corners; minor scuffing, toning, and creasing throughout. Altogether Very Good or better.
These statements of guarantee, issued by Columbia with the purchase of a bicycle, boast the product’s “superior features,” including its steel frame and built-in kickstand. Columbia bicycles were built and sold by Pope Manufacturing, making it the first company to produce bicycles on American soil. Pope helped to popularize the safety bicycle, a model with equal-sized wheels like those ridden today. This version rapidly outsold the previous penny-farthing (also called “ordinary”), an early model with a large front wheel that originated in Britain. Pope went bankrupt in 1915, reorganizing and continuing as Westfield Manufacturing Company the following year. As of the 2010s, Columbia-branded bicycles were manufactured by Ballard Pacific.
Source: “Columbia Bicycle, 1888,” National Museum of American History, The Smithsonian Institution, retrieved online.
Price: $150.00