[CR]ebay outing: pogliaghi

(Example: Framebuilding:Brazing Technique)

From: "C. Andrews" <chasds@mindspring.com>
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2004 16:29:04 -0800
Subject: [CR]ebay outing: pogliaghi

http://ebay.com/<blah>

The description of this auction started an interesting train of thought, already dealt with to some degree on this list, but maybe not with regard to this specific marque.

The seller is clearly trying to cash in on the fame of Sante Pogliaghi's frames made in the 1960s and 1970s, while this frame--on the surface anyway--is so obviously a product of the Basso or Rossin company. Made long after Sante had either sold his name, or died, or both. I find the explicit association between the ebay bike and Pogliaghi's glory days to be disengenous at best.. typical ebay blather, in other words.

But I didn't post this to slam the seller. He has to look himself in the mirror every day, and if he's here on the list I'm happy to engage with him or her off-list.

My thought, with regard to Pogliaghi specifically, is this: at what point did a Pogliaghi cease being a Pogliaghi? The reason this seems relevant (aside from the sterling qualities, both collectible and practical, of prime Pogis), is because, to my eye, some of the frames made by Rossin and marked Pogliaghi in the early-to-mid 1980s seem to retain the geometry, and, thus, I'd assume, the riding characteristics of a Pogi made by the man himself. So, to that degree, the Rossin Pogliaghis could be thought of as genuine, in a sense, anyway. The elaborate pantographing of parts, and the, how shall I say? Vivid paint and chrome on those bikes notwithstanding, maybe they still had *some* legitimate relationship to Sante and his philosophy of the bike...and so, are valuable for that reason alone.

Mr. Sachs has commented on this problem more than once I know, and if it's been addressed sufficiently we could ignore the whole question, and just say, when Pogliaghi retired, that was it, the end of the line. Or maybe the end of the line occured when the bikes ceased to be stamped PSM on the seat-cluster..I've been told that the PSM stamp was retained until the Pogliaghi shop was closed and all manufacturing was taken over by Rossin. I have no idea if that's true, though. I'd buy that as the end, if true.

I guess it bugged me to see someone exploiting Pogliaghi's reputation in service of a bike that had no relationship to him whatever--unless of course Basso continued to use Pogliaghi's designs...which seems unlikely to me.

Charles "Pogliaghi acolyte" Andrews SoCal

"Even in such a time of madness as the late twenties, a great many men in Wall Street remained quite sane. But they also remained very quiet. The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil."

--John Kenneth Galbraith *The Great
Crash of 1929*