Alright, for those of you who want a Fireball 24x3" tire (Dylan, have you gotten one yet?), I have a reasonably cheap and reasonably easy solution.
Mine just arrived today, having purchased it on eBay a couple weeks back (I sadly lack anything 24" to put it on… waiting on Darren’s 3" Bedford frames). So, yes, you get them on eBay – that’s the first clue. Secondly they’re from a guy named Mike who lives in Massachusetts (eBay user name: bac2the50s). I called Mike up as I wanted to pay with my credit card and chatted with him for a while – he’s a great guy. One of his first questions was, “are you a unicyclist?” I guess the Fireball is well known in that repect, which is pretty cool.
Apparently he’s talked with a manufacturer in Taiwan who, on his guarentee to buy 500 Fireballs, is shipping them to him in batches of 100 (digression: In this thread [http://tinyurl.com/4p0d – Jan. 4th] by rhysling [Christopher], he mentions someone who is doing this exact thing, so I don’t know if we’re referring to the same person or not. Since there wasn’t ever a conclusion to the thread, I’m not sure if Chris lost contact with the guy or what happened). Anyhow, these tires are being sold, one-by-one, on eBay at a starting price of $45 USD with a Buy It Now price of, I believe, $55 USD. Not too terrible for a tire that’s otherwise “impossible” to get. Living in Canada, I was charged $15 USD for shipping. I’m pretty sure it’s about $10 USD if you live in the US. Again, quite tolerable.
If you want to get one from him, I suggest the following eBay search:
http://tinyurl.com/4p1j
Mike seems to put up another tire fairly soon after he sells one (though the current auction says that he only has, “a few left out of 100.” This may mean he would have to call the manufacturer in Taiwan and get them to ship the next batch (I’m not sure; simply speculation).
To get in touch with Mike, his email address is (bac2the50s at aol dot com), or you can call his business (Nostalgia Merchants Inc.) at 1 (877) 731-2453 (BIKE).
A bit on another source mentioned in the newsgroup:
This thread (http://tinyurl.com/4p0y) has a link to a retailer (http://www.bikemotor.com/accessories_more.html) that at one point carried Fireballs. I don’t know if they still have any; I’ve emailed them and will post any response I get. That said, after reading the other posts on Fireballs, it seems they had 5 left in August 2001. I’ll guess they’ve run out of stock between now and then (but I’ll post if anything turns up).
That’s all for now. There are posts coming on my new Roach leg armour, my air-seat conversion and, come February, my new 24" MUni. They’ll all have to wait, though, as I’m about to fall asleep on my keyboard.
Later,
Eli.
