John very cool MASI(crown is fantastic) observation: pedal shipping arrangement was very common with EURO bikes,I especially remember ENGLISH bikes coming with one pedal threaded in backwards with the other piggyback to it(kept those pedals from banging around while being shipped),paper wrapping is exactly how I remember BIANCHIs coming in the 60s.unwrapping took longer than the rest of the assembly process.
"SOFT" vs "HARD" bike cases,I have never traveled by air with a bike but carried SKIs many,many, many times is a basic nylon bag and never had a problem,I think Skis,GOLF clubs(and bikes) are handled separately from the other luggage and are probably more of a danger to each other than from someone's 44 KG SAMSONITE. Also in passing I was the winning bidder of the recent EBAY BIANCHI mystery bike and had a long conversation with the current(former) owner before the close of auction, The bike was owned by a fellow who originally was from POLAND and brought the bike with him,it was serviced at GREGs bike shop for quite a while and then when the gentleman grew to old to ride it comfortably he sold it to the shop owner who had been displaying it in his home ever since,GREG is now relocating to COLORADO and is thinning his collection and thus now it comes to me,I believe the bike to be 1963 but originally thought it might have been a 50s bike updated to an alloy crank in 1970. "Decals" I believe were done by a POLISH bike shop before bike came here (I think there might be an interesting story here"POLISH refugee escapes armed border guards on his trusty BIANCHI") Anyway I will report when I get my hands on this bike . Listmembers who were kind enough to point the bike out to me and help evaluate it ,THANK YOU. a VERY HAPPY BOB FREITAS in sunny MILL VALLEY,CA
DALE ,GREG said to say HELLO he said you have had some dealings in the past