My buddy at work pulled this out of the trash. I looked through the old schwinn catalogs online, and looks like a schwinn, but the seat doesn’t look like a schwinn seat. any help would be cool.
My best guess is a hedstrom or maybe columbia but all I know for certain is that it isn’t a schwinn. There’s precious little documentation on this sort of thing.
John Foss will tell you more I imagine.
Looks like an Oxford, a Japanese uni from the '60’s.
Could be an Oxford; I have one with the same cap over the fork crown, but mine has different bearing holders. I have a different Japanese uni from the 70s called a “Pro”. I got mine from a classified ad in the early 80s for $20. I think it’s identical to yours, except mine is a 20". And it has a head tube badge (sticker). But Pro may have been a distributor-added brand; I’m not sure.
Mine came with no seat. Which is slightly worse than the seat on yours. The seat is from a company called Messenger, which also manufactured the Schwinn seats.
oxford?
i’ve gathered some more pictures of similar unicycles, searching oxford, i found a few that had a similar seat. i saw an identical one, minus the pedals, im pretty sure those are aftermarket, on an auction website. on the auction site, the pictures showed a sticker that said “pro unicycle” pro was horizontal, and unicycle was vertical under pro. ill get the pictures up later. i think the tire on mine is also after market, that what led me to thinking it was a schwinn at first, the lettering is hard to read, the white wall is pretty cracked, but its the same lettering as some old 1970’s schwinns i’ve seen pictures of.
The uni in your OP pictures is definitely not a Schwinn; definitely a Japanese uni that’s probably connected to the Oxford brand and may also be connected to the Pro brand. There’s nothing Schwinn about it. Or were you referring to the tire. Unlikely that a Schwinn tire would be on that uni, unless the owner also switched it out to a Schwinn S-7 rim. The original rim would be incompatible with Schwinn tires of the time. My Pro doesn’t have the tire it came with (it’s been sporting a pink tire with whitewall ever since it was my old handlebar uni for shows) but my Oxford has a whitewall with a diamond tread. Schwinns had straight lines on the tread, running the circumference of the tire.
i can read the white wall now.
i put some tire shine on the tire, and the cracks in the white wall are subsiding, it definitely says made in japan. so im pretty sure you guys, are right about it being an oxford. also, i should have asked before i did it, is armourall tireshine bad for the tire? my brother in law said it would help with cracks, but i think it is also eating away the white wall. also thanks for all the info, now i just need to find a picture of one in really nice condition, so i can restore this one to look new. i love the look of the saddle, and really want to rebuild it.