I was wandering the countryside with my wife when I chanced to enter an antique-type shop in Brookfield, Missouri and saw this beauty:
Of course, I bought it. According to the broken English inside the flier, it originally came with a shoulder strap, which is absent, as is the key (though as it was a 60’s or 70’s era luggage key, it won’t be hard to find a substitute if I want one). It’s in like-new condition, with a smell that speaks of old vinyl and nothing else, no garage smell or barn stink or even the fragrance of an attic. The material feels like the cover of a particularly soft basketball, less nubbly but just as thick and substantial feeling. The straps were meant to be cut to length and the hooks and loops attached with judicious application of a hammer; the original owner has already done the job, so I can only assume this bag was actually used at least once.
I haven’t tried it yet, but I think the straps are long enough to fit my ’80 CB650’s tank. I hope so, anyway. One strap is cut shorter than the other, so the original owner’s tank was tapered in 70’s style rather than brick-shaped like the Japanese bikes of the ’60’s; this gives me some hope that it will fit my Honda.
Anyway, I just had to post about this… it’s such a nice piece, and I feel lucky to lay my hands on it.
… so tonight I got home and did some research. It appears this bag is still made, and has been in production for a long time. First let me say, wow. I have no way to know how old this particular bag is… there are no dates whatsoever on the flier or tag. Google found very few images that look like this, and almost all of them lead to this page:
http://aldana.jp/menu/index.cgi?job=res&no=751&page=95
I can’t read Japanese, but Google sort of can, so I ran it through their translator. Still didn’t learn much. The pictures on that page have dates under them, all in 2009 apparently, and the descriptions for some of the bags make it appear that they are still being made and that this site has some that are custom made for them.
One item of note to me is that the photos (all of them) in the flier that I got with the bag all depict motorcycles from the ’60’s or very early ’70’s. I can’t believe that any current unit still comes with the vintage paperwork. Also found another bag for sale on ebay (actually already sold) where the seller says his uncle bought it in the 1970’s.
It mentions the clear map holder, which one of the models shown in the flier I got does have, making the two bags contemporaries. It gives me some hope that this is a vintage unit.
Even if it isn’t, those bags on aldana.jp? The price is more than 3x what I paid. So I still got a bargain.
[…] in 2017 I picked up a vintage Corona tank bag. I said in that post that I didn’t know for sure how old it was, but based on the included […]