Collecting is a transferable skill from one set of collectible items to another. Once you become a collector, you can collect motorcycles, you can collect watches, or toothpicks—or anything. You learn the techniques of collecting. But the point is that all the great motorcycles aren’t in museums. They haven’t all been discovered and cataloged. When I bought my first important motorcycle, I was dumbfounded that I, just an ordinary person, had this incredibly important motorcycle. And instead of being in the British National Motorcycle Museum, it was in my house.

That said, I am of the firm belief that collectors can expect no more than one clean shot at an important acquisition. "Let me think about it overnight" usually means the next guy gets the item. Pricing historic motorcycles is difficult; after all, where do you comparison shop? Prices on such items do not often come out of a price guide. You make your own rules and your own price guide.

What are your thoughts on stewardship?

Ancient Roman law classified the rights of property ownership on many levels, the most complete of which is having the power not only to use the property but also to destroy it. Obviously, with historic objects, few consciously exercise this right fully, but every new collector might well think of this last aspect of ownership as belonging to either society in general or his peer collectors in the future. Essentially, my goal is to leave every motorcycle better than I found it.

Additionally, ownership of a historic machine carries with it a duty to show it to the public from time to time. Hidden treasures dim the public’s consciousness of them. Besides, these fine machines are enjoyed more when you let people interact with them, take pictures, ask questions, and more. One thing I try to achieve with a famous bike is to display it without overdoing it and overexposing it.

Which bikes form the core of your collection?

The ones that are the most collectible, the ones that really buzz me, the ones that have great stories behind them, instead of just the nuts and bolts. You could say it’s not the hardware, it’s the history.

Is acquiring race bikes especially challenging?

Every race motorcycle, from the first day that it gets pulled out of the crate, becomes a modified motorcycle. The other thing about race bikes is that they’re crashed. The older the bike and the more races it’s been in, the more a fact of life that is. And as a consequence, don’t be disappointed if your old race bike has had this, that, and the other thing replaced. The best you can hope for are the major components: an original frame, an original motor case. Anything else that’s original is a bonus. I think that still makes that motorcycle legitimate. It’s not a Paul Bunyan’s ax proposition.

How important is originality?

Every collector ought to develop his own protocol about how he treats the things he acquires. You have to think of some across-the-board strategy, and this is ours: If we get a bike that is not restored, if it’s original, we maintain its originality. Number one, there’s no such thing as factory dirt, so we clean with a clear conscience. Second, when we fluff them up a little, we want them to present well, but we will not use anything that is not used with your fingers. In other words, we won’t put them on a buffing wheel. We put wax on the existing paint, but we won’t spray new paint. We clean the old chrome, even though it’s pitted, even though it’s not all there, instead of rechroming it. The only way we’ll go beyond that is if a part is missing and we don’t have any other choice.

What dictates the need for a frame-up restoration?

If your eyes stop and focus on the flaws and don’t keep moving over the entire motorcycle, then I think you’ve got to consider restoration. We want to pay tribute to great machines, and tribute is not paid to them if they’re absolutely terrible. Tribute is paid to them if they look 50 years old because they are 50 years old. If they look 300 years old and they’re only 50 years old, perhaps they deserve a little better treatment, but we’ll consider a restoration only if there is just no other way. You can scrape off the original paint only once.

What drew you to the Vincent marque in particular?

Vincent had the legend, the records. While a lot of motorcycles have set records, Vincents have set more than most. But what really turns me on is that their engineering solutions are not copies of anybody else’s. They’ve never used a telescopic fork, and practically every motorcycle built today has one. They found their own rear suspension, and they found their own valve control. They look like they were built in a complete vacuum.

Do aesthetics play a role as well?