On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 6:17 PM, <hersefan@comcast.net> wrote:
> I think a big issue right now is that there is a shifting focus to 80's
> super record bikes. The DeRosa under question, the early
> need-a-new-restoration early Masi Pista that Scott Davis sold awhile ago,
> and the Cinelli 1960 high-patina-but-gorgeous frame that sold last week all
> indicate a market shift. There simply is no market depth to the market for
> these machines.
>
> What the market is saying is that bicycles built with stamped lugs (more
> time intensive) from what I think was a glorious time period (the era of
> Merckx) are not floating the boats of many perhaps newbies to the hobby.
> Part of this is - and this will offend - indicates a lack of framebuilding
> knowledge on the part of many buyers. Years ago our Gita rep said the
> biggest enhancement to framebuilding from a manufacturers perspective was
> the introduction of new paint primers that were great at hiding blems. Add
> that to cast lugs, and we are getting closer to the "plug and play" frame
> construction than many would want to admit.
>
> It was interesting that a recent post by a graduate of the UBI frame
> building program had to jump to cast lugs since the stamped ones were too
> much of a project. There is a very important message in that.
>
> So is this good or bad? Well I've thinned out much of my bike stable
> lately, and if the market decides to reward the mass-produced ($*%( and
> undervalues the "good stuff", I think I may be all for it as I will go into
> a buy-mode at some point again perhaps. But am I planning at the moment to
> revise the price guide I wrote years ago? Not until I can make sense of
> this market that has no basis in reason as I understand it.
Oof, Mike! I'm a younger guy/newer to the hobby, and I certainly have a /lot/ less interest in stuff from the 70s and earlier than many on the list. That doesn't mean that I'm ignorant of the construction differences between a 70s bike and an 80s bike -- it just means my interests are different. I'd argue that making an objective statement that one is "better" than the other is pretty tough. Construction methodology is certainly a large part of the hobby, but for some of us, there's more to it than the amount of filing required to make the frame. My interest comes from following racing in the 80s, and working at a shop that both carried the crazy/great frames and bikes of the 80s, but also had framebuilding in house (Proteus in College Park, MD) -- which brings up my interest in Yamaguchi, 3Rensho, and all the surrounding Japanese bikes. Different strokes, you know?
As folks my age and younger get into the hobby, the interest in the bikes of /our/ youth goes up... next thing you know, we're going to be reminiscing about 10 speed brifters that you actually had to shift yourself, rather than those dang electronic CVTs everyone has today...
Unabashed 80s fan,
sasha eysymontt, nyc.
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,+'^'+ sasha eysymontt
sashae at gmail dot com - http://subtle.org/
`+,.,+` new york city.