Hi Mark,
You are totally correct to be suspicious. I have been taking a close
look at recent pantographing sales on ebay and the thing that distresses
me most is that they are all so incorrect.
The seller you mentioned sold two 1st series Colnago Pantografata seat
posts (rhombus)recently and they looked pretty good compared to the
normal offerings. Problem with them was that they were 27mm where they
should have been 27.2mm which was the size of those frames in 73.
The stem you mentioned is way off. Has nice rhombus panto on top but the
engraved Colnago is twice the size it should be and the 1a stem should
be the early nutted version.
The bars are wrong as Colnago never offered this - only fine stamping of
his head tube badge on the left side of the 3T bars.
Engraving of deraileurs is a new concept and Colnago favoured cut-out
and infilled with paint shift levers.
Brake levers were cut out in two sections at the rear of the handle as
well as pantograhed.
Let me be totally frank...I have no problem with components being
pantographed as long as the patterns are correct and the components are
period correct. What will happen is that the correct look and history of
these bikes will in time become blurred as more and more bikes are being
built with the wrong designs. In a decade or two they will appear as
undisputedly genuine. Unless there is some reference guide as to what
original 70s and 80s pantograph designs actually looked like these
modern 2nd rate incorrect replicas will be considered original and
correct. I have begun to get as much of this as I can in picture form in
my flickr site...but this is still a work in progress.
http://www.flickr.com/
neglected. I
Greg Softley
Coffs Harbour
Australia