Ken Toda asks,
>How about vintage Japanese parts? How many more years to wait, 10, 20,
or
>25 years?? Any thoughts, Jery or anyone??
I'll bite. My bets for future collectibles from Japan, as well as a couple of current ones -
1. Obviously 3Renshos, which are already highly prized and priced accordingly.
2. Bridgestone's nicer bikes, which already have a fanatical cult following. I suspect they'll appreciate nicely.
3. SunTour Superbe stuff will continue to grow in value. Currently, much of it is sought by those who for aesthetic and other reasons reject Campagnolo and Shimano. I think in time, though, they'll become quite collectible. The first pattern Cyclone derailleurs and shifters will also be desired down the road - wasn't Mike Kone selling those NOS for a while there?
A side note - at some point, people doing display boards will be mounting V-, VT, or VGT-Luxe derailleurs on them. Those derailleurs probably did more to make Japanese components respectable on the world market than anything else. They were simple, durable, smooth and humble. Hard to beat. Same goes for SunTour freewheels, which were highly regarded as replacement parts.
4. Shimano. Geez, this is hard for me ... but we're already seeing certain Dura Ace parts from earlier incarnations gathering steam as desirable bits to tuck away. I'd vote for the original Crane derailleurs, for sure. Also, for curiosity sake if nothing else, all the evolutionary dead-end parts Shimano has introduced to the market. They deserve an award for the, "Hey, we'll try anything" category.
5. Nitto - bless 'em, they're still with us! In my monkeying about with bike boom and later machines, I keep noticing that every Nitto part I come into contact still looks good. That should be worth something ...
6. Dia-Compe and Gran Compe. Someday, someone is going to figure out that the Gran Compe centerpull brakeset, the really deluxe one, is probably the high-water mark for a centerpull brake. Didn't they use ball-bearings in some of those? They sure were pretty, and had all sorts of neat features.
For that matter - the older, standard-reach Gran-Compe sidepulls meant to compete with Dura-Ace don't receive near as much as they should, price-wise. The set I cleaned up earlier this year may have had the nicest finish of any brakes I've ever handled.
My perception - vintage lightweight bikes in 2000 are where vintage guitars were in 1980. There is a small band of folks who really value them, and we tend to trade amongst ourselves. The general idea that older bikes are worthwhile is beginning to percolate among those who are not enthusiasts. I suspect that the days of finding a Colnago in someone's garage sale will soon go the way of all those '55 Stratocasters that used to show up in pawnshops - if they haven't already.
One of the things that this list (and several listmembers in particular) are doing is disseminating the information needed to make wise decisions in the trade. Using the guitar collecting analogy again, the take-off point for that hobby happened when enough information and literature was available for the market to stabilize. It is only a matter of time until there are printed guidebooks to vintage bikes, as there are for guitars (prime example - the Gruhn Field Guide).
Then the next stage happens - when the bikes considered collectible have been collected, bikes that were not as desirable will be elevated. My guitar collecting analogy again - it has been more than a decade since I saw a Gibson Les Paul from 1957-60 for sale in a shop, and at least five years since I saw one at a show. I've also seen instruments long viewed as "player-grade," or even "beater, fixer-upper, beach guitar" get restored and sold for fabulous amounts. When someone asks for, and gets, $1,000 for a refinished Montgomery Ward guitar built by Gibson, it should raise eyebrows. The same guitar would have brought $100, tops, five years before.
Russ Fitzgerald
Greenwood SC
rfitzger@emeraldis.com