I'll really try to make this coherent, but I'm recovering from my Brea Canyon route, finished off with 20 miles into a stiff wind. Interesting, isn't it, how whatever it is that fries muscles can leak into the brain.
Anyway, a pseudo-Socratic dialog on the subject:
Q: Are some of us nuts? A: I certainly hope so. Normal people are boring.
Q: Are YOU nuts? A: No, of course not. Who said there was anything wrong with being boring? It's a professional requisite for us engineers, and, furthermore, .....
Oops. There goes the irrelevancy sensor. Back on topic.
I have about a dozen bikes in my garage, only one of which is fairly new. Even that one is a Koga Miyata, which, without its paint, would be hard to tell from a Miyata of 20 years ago. I like them all for their classic design, elegance, and dignity, all of which are absolutely missing from modern bicycling hardware. I bought them all for rational prices, and the ones I've restored have been at sensible cost. I suppose I wouldn't miss any meals if I overpaid for something I really wanted occasionally, but I have a ground rule for all this: economic rationality. Beyond that, I really don't care what happens to the value. That's not why I have them.
Frankly, I'm happy this way. It's not too difficult to imagine what would happen if these creatures actually appreciated rapidly in value, and people started buying them as investments instead of for what they are. I suppose you could make the case that it would lead to better preservation, but mostly it would simply remove them from view and drive prices out of reach of us normal folk.
Charles is quite correct about the differentiation between the collectibles and everything else. Of course, the preference for the collectible stuff is clear from the most cursory reading of these posts. But the elegance and classic design isn't limited, by any means, to the Masis and Cinellis. The greater the emphasis on the collectibles, the more people miss this point. It's like my kid, a clarinetist, who is a 20th-century music enthusiast. Ask him why he likes that strange stuff, and he'll just shrug and point out that there's more to music than Mozart and Beethoven. And, I think there's more to classic bicycles than Masi and Colnago.
Steve Maas Long Beach, California
PS: I'm the one who bought the chrome Rossi with the Rino components that was the subject of some posts last week. Still waiting for it to arrive.