These eBay items have generated a considerable amount of column inches in respect of the hubs themselves, the nature and origin of the photo on the ebay add, and even the bona-fides of the seller. As to the seller I know him well enough. He has been a retailer/'importer in the UK for a considerable time..and as an ex amateur racer of some distinction he has had contacts within the trade and manufacturing. For a long number of years he had frames bearing his company's name.. and even sponsored an excellent amateur road team. Judging from what I know of him in an indirect way.. he might even have been a frame builder. Even if he was not a builder before opening his own business, he certainly has strong connections with a former highly reputed one... or more.Over the past twelve months he has sold on eBay some very high quality goods.
As for his latest offerings these might or might not be 1930s FBs... they might have been models produced in the late40/early50s, but you have to remember that in those days manufacturers did not change their lines every season.. not a t all like the fashion industry that now prevails in the sport...and..there was something called World War 2 that got in the way of new model development. Possibly all the alloy that we now lust after was being used in the war effort in Mussolini's Italy. I have a number of sets of NIB FB hubs, both large and small flange, from the late 40s/earl;y 50s. The boxes are identical to those on the eBat ad., but the contents are different. They are the two part steel barrel/alloy flange jobs, used by Simplex as the basis for some of their hubs when they were not using Prior.. and also possibly the basis for early Campag hubs. I also have on a couple of early 30s and 40s Italian and French bikes whose hubs that bear more than a passing resemblance to the eBay FBs, as well as all-steel Campag hubs that have the lines of the more fluid less angular lines of the Campag Gran Sports. I reckon from stuff I have stuffed away that these hubs probably are from the 30s, but that the same models were still available in the 50s. I agree with the contri that although the seller states that they are single-spedd, they will take a 3,4 or possibly 5.
I am not a seller on eBay but I probably would be if I could understand the system of actually putting photos onto the ads... and that assumes that I can understand how to take pictures with the state-of-the-art 3-year-old digital camera. Some of us.. the older end of the List do not adapt easily to new devices.. possibly because we did not come into contact with "IT" during our working lives. Knowing the eBay seller of these hubs I would say that it is far more likely that he spends more time with an oily rag in his hands than a digital camera.. and if he does have such a camera it probably has Campag bearing grease all over its lens.
Norris Lockley... feeeling very inadequate "IT"-wise.. Settle UK
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