Monkeyman Brandon has touched on a subject close to my heart, though. Ken has accurately stated the reasons these things don't exist ... yet. Please forgive the length of this and the two posts following it, but I've been thinking about this for a while, anyway. Delete if you're not interested ...
One flawed analogy, and I apologize for the length of it - when I started playing guitar in the late 70s, there were NO books on vintage guitars. You settled for the pictures in Tom Wheeler's The Guitar Book (1974), which were often photos of non-original instruments, or were inaccurately described. The book itself was full of errors in talking about earlier guitars, for that matter, complete with passing on the now-exploded myth that the Fender Broadcaster/Telecaster came out in 1948 (it was 1950 ...), etc.
By 1982, things had started changing. Wheeler's much-better book, American Guitars, came out that year. French collector A.R. Duchossoir's research into guitar history became progressively better, more detailed, and far more accurate. By 1990, books on vintage guitars popped up throughout the marketplace. Gruhn's Field Guide came along, making it possible to identify just about any worthwhile U.S. guitar. By the mid-90s, there were even good, detailed, accurate books on long-overlooked but now valuable instruments as their fortunes and desireability rose.
What happened was that vintage guitar values had climbed dramatically. As the delight of older instruments became known to more than a tiny group of cognoscenti, the demand grew. Add to that the number of baby boomers in the U.S. who woke up and said, "I always wanted that red Rickenbacker like Pete Townshend had," (feel free to substitute a specific guitar and artist), and the boom grew faster. Finally, all those folks in Japan and Europe who had always loved U.S. and British pop and rock joined in and started purchasing them.
Now, as far as vintage bikes go, I think we're about where guitar collectors were in 1974. There are some books, and many are better than Wheeler's first go at it. We already have a growing sense of there being certain models that people buy out of nostalgia, or because they wanted one when they were younger, but couldn't afford it - Raleigh Professionals, Internationals, and Competitions, as well as certain Italian and (to a lesser extent) French bikes.
The bicycle isn't the same cultural, totemic thing in our times that the guitar has become, however. It may never command the same sort of market - any time you think the price for a well-preserved 40s Herse is steep, look at what '58-60 Gibson Les Pauls go for.
Next - books I'd like to see ...
Russ Fitzgerald
Greenwood SC
rfitzger@emeraldis.com