Chuck S. wrote:
Extreme rarity does not always equate to high prices in the marketplace.
Chuck Schmidt South Pasadena, Southern California
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Regarding the chrome paramount...if you subtract the price of the no-logo brakes and the early levers, the bike sold for about 2000 bucks..still high, but not that outta line for a die-hard paramount collector. Those brakes and levers, with the cables, casings, and ferrules (a turnkey brakeset, in other words), would sell for over 1500 bucks on ebay, easily, I'm guessing. The last set I remember went for north of 1200 bucks, and it wasn't in nearly as good condition..anyone know what the latest ebay price-paid has been on those, as a complete set? I suspect others have sold more recently that I've missed.
Those brakes are the coolest of the cool for many top late-60s racing frames, so the market for them is very strong. Japanese collectors would surely have a lot of interest in them too... 1600 bucks isn't far-fetched.
You could replace those brakes with some nice Weinmanns for cheap, and the bike would still be completely period-correct.
As for the issue of extreme rarity, I have a perfect example hanging here at home. My Argos criterium frame. I was the original buyer in 1975 or so. Very rare frame. You hardly ever see them. I know some quantity of them was brought into the country around that time, but not many, and they weren't around for long. Worth almost nothing, except to me. Nice, stiff racing frame, with the most bulletproof paint you ever saw. Workmanship is average, or worse. Really bad toe-clip overlap. I wouldn't sell it, but if I did, I'd be lucky to get 100 bucks for it, imho.
I'm trying to think, now, of a very rare frame or bike from that time that *would* be worth a lot. Rene Herse comes to mind. Imagine one of the last Herses touched by Rene himself. If you could prove that? You'd have hit the lottery. Would Rene's last frame be better as a rider or racer than my lowly Argos? Probably. Would it be 2 or 3K better? There we enter the weightless realm of ego gratification.
Charles Andrews SoCal
"The deeper I go in considering the vanities of popular reasoning, the lighter and more foolish I find them."
--Galileo Galilei