Nick wrote:
"OK...Don't keep us hangin'....What IS your short list of
worthy restoration
> projects?"
and Chuck replied, in part:
"The list is determined by the market (mainly eBay). Bikes that get lots of action on eBay like Herse, Singer, 70s and earlier Masi, Colnago, Cinelli, things like Gillott, Hetchins, Ephgrave, Hurlow for example are worth a restoration if needed. "
******* This got me thinking about a restoration I saw awhile back..a very good job too. Early 60s top-line Frejus, with new chrome, paint, pinstripes, the works. It must have set the owner back at least $1500 for the job. Everything was correct. I'm sure he loved it.
But I sure couldn't make that work from a purely financial point-of-view. You'd have a dead loss on your hands, unless you paid nothing for the bike. I think this may have been his long-time property, so, maybe it worked out ok, for him.
Then I got to thinking about restorations in general. And how I have real trouble with them anymore. I have nothing but respect for the handful of people in this world who do them, and do them well, and I enjoy looking at bikes that have been properly restored. But increasingly... they leave me unmoved. At least, as compared with a clean original bike, with all its paint, graphics, and parts as original. The history carried right in plain sight is moving.
I've had many restorations done...I don't like to think about how much they all cost, if you add them up. And in the end, the original bikes are the ones I like best. Take a restored bike, use it hard for a few years, and then perhaps it develops some character..but it's still a reproduction, in some sense.
One bike I have that is an interesting hybrid, and seldom seen, is a Pogliaghi Brian Baylis restored for someone else.. Brian ended up masking all the original graphics (and they were all there), repainting the bike, then clear-coating the entire frame, preserving the original graphics and new paint. The result is very charming..you have the pleasure of a beautiful paint-job, with the charm of the original graphics. It looks fresh off the showroom floor, and quite original. So some of the character is retained. Brian claimed he'd never do that again, it nearly drove him crazy... but he did do a startling job, and everyone who sees the bike admires it. I'm actually going to end up with another, similar job soon, but the graphics were *much* simpler to mask... and I expect it will have the same hybrid charm.
But, I have to say, at the end of the day, original is best. Original is more satisfying in the end, every time.
As far as getting your money back out of a restoration... the only way to manage that is to pick the right project, as Chuck noted, and pay as little as possible for the original bike. Otherwise, dead loss.
I once heard of someone having a UO8 restored. Turned out great too... but that was absolutely an albatross in someone's estate..<g>
Charles 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*