I once collected old bikes. Not hard to do in CA. Mostly people will just give you old bikes if you ask.
I would take bike paint it ALL black, no tape. Bars, seat, tires and spokes. Then I knew this guy that was really good at old school pin striping, he could do a cool old Harley-D look in about 15 min. Sell it for 75.00. We did 25 of those before we burned out.