CR and/or Ebay needs to establish "rules of the road" when a seller claims that a vintage part is in a specific condition. I always wonder about sellers asking premium prices for what they describe as "shop-worn" and imply it is in mint condition. The bottom line is that there is no uniformly applied ranking of bicycle part conditions that people adhere to on Ebay or the CR.
I have written Ebay about this in the past and they have refused to get involved, saying they are only a listing agent and that any implied descriptions of items for auction are solely between buyer and seller.
Consider this a call for action for CR members to decide what descriptions should apply to the following proposed ratings. Prehaps different description should apply to frames versus parts/components?
Mint Excellent Good Fair Poor
What do you think?
Regards, Steve
> > ...but in the bicycle world it seems that
> > "mint" means "never crashed". Just an
> > observation.
> Joe,
> Your observation is correct. As you can imagine, that's just
> what bothers me at this point. When old parts and frames were
> still relatively inexpensive I suppose some amount of leeway in
>
> this regard was acceptable. But I feel that people who want top
> dollar for their parts and frames are obligated to go by the
> same standards that aply to all other expensive collectables.
> Best regards,
> Fred Rednor
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month.
> http://geocities.yahoo.com/