Greg,
Actually, I believe that your friend is spot on in his assessment with respect to the care and consideration given by most bicycle manufacturers relative to their adhering to any strict parts "dating" scheme during assembly and this would most especially hold true of those who were desperately trying to ramp up their production during the Bike Boom era (...which actually precedes your source's experience by several years).
Unlike today, where component manufactures, including Campagnolo, have embraced a "marketing-centric" philosophy which tends to introduce with great hyperbola supposedly "new and improved" editions within their model lineup each and every year such that distinguishing a 2006 from a 2005 or a 2004 vintage component is relatively easy (...and I am not picking on Campy here, they came late to this game Shimano was the one who really brought this strategy to the fore in the cycling world with their "let's introduce as many design innovations as we can across our entire range of products and then let the consumers figure out which ones are worth us spending further time and resources refining while we drop the rest after a year or two of sluggish sales" mentality). Back in that sacred time frame upon which this forum is focused, product development cycles in general were much, much longer. To wit, notice the level of minutia the Campynista in good standing will focus upon in their description of details regarding any particular component in order to differentiate it from that produced during any previous or subsequent year (...take last week's discussion on this very list concerning early Record brake calipers having 1967 to 1968 first generation non-chamfered block style center bolts marked "BREV. CAMP." versus post 1968 and pre 1974 second generation center bolts which were now chamfered but still marked "BREV. CAMP." versus post 1973 third generation chamfered center bolts simply marked "PATENT", or those pre 1974 "long arm / long reach" alloy levers with "slim point" profile and "round" shaped cable relief openings versus any other possible combination thereof thankfully, there will not be a test on all of this). Please keep in mind that the average person outside the zealot subscribers herein would be hard pressed to distinguish the difference between any two or more set of Record brake calipers and levers produced anytime from 1967 to 1985 (...excluding the obvious SR "drilled" lever variants). Why? Because they just did not change all that much during that timeframe - and that would be typical of most components from most manufacturers. It is only by focusing on such details that one may determine relative production dates with any degree of accuracy. And what would arguably be the single greatest catalyst for change in design during that same period of time? I would posit that it was those blasted C.P.S.C. mandates that tried to save us all from ourselves. Indeed, there were other actual benchmark improvements to various things along the way (...SunTour's 1964 slant parallelogram rear derailleur design jumps to mind here), but generally speaking, last years model from a given manufacturer looked and performed pretty much like the next. It was simple. It was safe. It was WAY too predictable. In fact, this was a major reason why many European companies, and the French in particular, would eventually pay the "ultimate price" in the market place they became almost totally stagnant while their competitors (...primarily the Japanese) actually tried to improve upon their product offerings (...albeit sometimes moving two steps forward and one step back, but at least they kept trying until they finally hit upon something big, like that revolutionary freehub concept that would eventually transplant the screw on freewheel as industry standard).
Anyway, getting back to the original premise of this lengthy missive, the average bicycle manufacturer of the day would have seen absolutely no benefit whatsoever to sweating such details as date code consistency among components on their bikes. Consider this: U.S. domestic bike sales for the year 1960 were 3.7 million units, with that number climbing to a more respectable 5.6 million in 1965 (...a 51 percent jump in only five years) before edging up another 23 percent to 6.9 million by 1970. However, by 1973 that annual number had exploded to 15.2 million bicycles sold here stateside, which meant that none of the preeminent bicycle or component manufacturers could even come close to producing enough product to sate worldwide demand and most major players in the industry began throwing things together as fast as they possibly could with little or no regard for such trivial matters as "component date coding consistency". As further evidence of this fact, I submit for example the Gitane Tour de France that I purchased new in 1973 (...that peak year of the Bike Boom) which came right out of the box with a Campagnolo Nuovo Record rear derailleur stamped "PATENT-72" while its Record front changer was a post 1972 version having a circlip on the upper pivot of the upper control arm (...unusual componentry for a TdF, to be sure - but I know for a fact that these were original because I watched the bike as it was being unboxed after having been shipped directly to the LBS from the distributor). Did Cycles Gitane care about this inconsistency? Apparently not. Did the LBS pay it any mind? Not in the slightest. As a reasonably astute consumer, upon noticing this peculiarity, did I immediately demand that something be done about it? You have got to be kidding. I was simply thrilled to take possession of my new ride, never mind such inane details. Besides, anyone who rode a bike back then, and most especially those who participated in some form of competitive venue, KNEW that within short order any number of parts and details would be changed about in order to find a bit more speed as well as to allow the proud owner to somehow brand it as theirs and theirs alone.
It is only with the benefit (?) of hindsight that certain collector types attempt to sanitize their stable and perhaps even their view of the world by inflicting a rigorous code of standard that, in all honesty, probably did not exist in the first place for the vast majority of vintage bicycles. There were, to be sure, a few very low volume, high quality constructeurs that may have been willing to oversee manufacturing to the level of detail required to maintain perfect order and balance in such matters. But they would have most certainly been the exception and NOT the rule.
Robert "not one to abide revisionist history" Broderick ...the "Frozen Flatlands" of South Dakota
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Greg Overton wrote:
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Moving on, I was talking with a friend locally, who worked for the Holdsworthy Company as a young man in the late seventies and early eighties, about the recent topic on this forum regarding dating original components by year and matching them to the frame. He laughed out loud! He said that at Holdsworth, there were bins of Campy (and other I suppose) parts that were unpackaged, in bulk if you will, and the assemblers just grabbed them randomly from the bins to assemble the bikes. He told me that unless there was a change in design or otherwise obvious difference, parts were parts, new ones went right in with old ones, and you could very easily get last year's or older on this year's bike depending upon what the assembler grabbed to install. His hunch was that Holdsworth (and its other brands at the time) was not unique in this practice. Does this at all muddy the notion of "original" as it relates to the bikes often discussed here? Just curious I guess.
Greg Overton Logan, Utah, where there are no 54/55 Columbine frames