One point made by another poster struck a chord with me: restorations and originals should not be competing against each other in any kind of show. They're completely different animals, imho, and should be considered as such. An original, to my way of feeling, is inherently more interesting, and more significant, than a restoration, no matter how accomplished.
The most powerful thing a restoration can do is evoke the original. If a restoration is so good that it can fool me into believing I'm looking at an original, then it's achieved as much as a restoration can achieve --besides the always-laudable goal of making the owner happy. But it's still not as interesting as an original.
Better-than-new (or different-than-new anyway) restorations may make an owner happy, but they have very little to do with an original bike. The better-than-new restoration can be very interesting, especially if it's imaginative in some way... but most of the time this kind of restoration has a tabula-raza quality that isn't very compelling. Beautiful modern paint, reproduction graphics buried in layers of clear-coat are just that. Somehow these pieces seldom coalesce into something more. A little like a physically beautiful person who doesn't have much to say. Not because they won't, but because they can't.
A restoration that's seen a lot of good use is different...now the bike once again has a story to tell. But, it's still a restoration, and not what came from the maker's shop..or from his original painter anyway.
History, however modest, is written in every original bike, whether pristine or well-used. The hand of the maker, or his proxies, are everywhere in an original. They are gone, except in pale spirit, in a restoration, most of the time anyway. For me, anyway, a restoration is *never* as pleasing as an original. It can't be, almost by definition.
Think about the Rotrax pair at the Cirque. Aside from the fact that *no-one* does that kind of pin-striping in that fashion these days (as far as I know), these bikes would just not be anywhere near as hypnotic if they were restorations.
There are always exceptions to this stuff. I'm making some general points. And my bias is clear enough: original is better. Period. A data point worth exactly what you paid for it. Although original might make you happier, in the end. And original is almost always cheaper, a not-inconsequential point considering the cost of a good restoration.
My plugged nickle.
Charles "learned all this the hard way" Andrews SoCal
"The deeper I go in considering the vanities of popular reasoning, the lighter and more foolish I find them."
--Galileo Galilei
"There is no society in recorded history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable. "
-- Sam Harris