Dan wrote:
I'm not the seller, don't know 'em, don't have anything interesting enough to trade 'em darn it. Love the chainring.
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/
The original posting has photos with this text:
"1974 Colnago 56cm Shown at Munich (berkeley)
*******
What's wrong with this bike, let me count the ways.
1) The paint-job is mediocre at best. Note how the painters didn't even bother to fill in the cutouts correctly. I can't see the graphics in detail, but I assume those were all correct, although it's hard to see if the chainstay graphic is there.
2) Crowns would have been chromed on Supers of this vintage. Amazing someone went to the trouble of repainting this and didn't have the crown chromed. A show-bike would have had chromed head-lugs and chromed ends too. Somone didn't bother with that either...assuming this is a show-bike, which I doubt.
3) Note the late Super Record front derailleur. This and other details suggest someone built this frame from random parts, and that it wasn't built for a show at all, or, if it was, it was made in 1975 or 1976.
4) The pantographing of the chainring isn't really right for 1974...although I have seen rings like this that are claimed to be of that vintage. The earliest decorated Colnago rings were either drilled or milled with just the Colnago flower and nothing else. The flower inside the *C* seems to have shown up in late 1974/1975 with the introduction of the Mexico. Evidence of period brochures suggests this timeline.
5) The pantographing of the shift-levers is definitely wrong for the period of the frame. These probably came from 1980 or after. If you checked the other side, you'd almost certainly find these are the later-version of the Super Record levers.
The size as stated is probably center-to-center. You'd want to check that.
Still appears to be a nice enough bike if undamaged. But the repaint and the apparent mongrel parts group does reduce value substantially. Convincing the seller he has a not-a-show-bike mongrel probably won't be easy, either.
Charles Andrews SoCal
"It's impossible to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it."
-Upton Sinclair