Raleigh bicycles serial numbers serial number#
Owned by Raleigh since the previous year, the marque is still marketed under its original name.Even more than most Raleigh models of this era, dating and identifying Professionals can be a bit of a minefield especially if one falls into the "brochure trap" of trying to reconcile production machines with the blandishments of a paper brochure.With Raleigh, it's more meaningful to ascertain the serial number especially the letter prefix which determines the production year of the frame that may often bracket the brochure "year". Moreover, starting in 1963 Carlton fielded its own racing team, Carlton-BMB (British Manufactured Bearings), comprised of George Shaw, Michael Coupe, Mike Harpham and Sean Ryan.Based on the vagaries of competing corporate marketing goals, the team would be variously called Carlton-BMB or Raleigh-BMB (1966, 1968) and in 1967 George Shaw became manager and the squad, composed of such star riders as Bob Addy, Bernard Burns and Arthur Metcalf, tallied 40 first-place wins in road, track and cyclo-cross competition.