The Bruce Gordon show bike currently on eBay has come up repeatedly over the past couple/few days, but I'm really curious about other people's take on this machine.
I can certainly imagine how nice it probably once looked, but the photos seem to show pretty clearly that it's not doing too well at this point. It *really* doesn't look like the gold-plated parts survived the years, unless one was really likes the (much) darker gold shade of surface rust. The cranks look to have been rubbed pretty bad, and it's unlikely that the black-anodizing has held up well (my experience with colored anodizing jobs done without the QC of a fastidious factory). Mainly, though...all that rust. It's quite possible that the low-resolution photos are doing many facets of the bike a favor.
I'd love to be wrong (even though it's actually a bit too small for me). It's great that the bike appears to have been *ridden* fairly hard, at least for a while (before perhaps being stored in rather humid conditions).
The frame does look really sweet, and looks to be in reasonable shape, but the overall bike looks like it'd require tons of work (fun work, nonetheless) to bring back from its current condition. I'm glad it's not my size, 'cause I'd be *so* torn about springing for it and taking on a project like this (and about how to proceed, given the shape the bike is in and what it once was). I'm actually still torn.
Does anybody have any experience with how well rusted gold-plated components clean up?
Scott
Scott Minneman "Does the concept of 'patina' actually apply in this instance?" San Francisco, CA USA
-----Original Message----- From: BobHoveyGa@aol.com [mailto:BobHoveyGa@aol.com] Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2008 11:18 AM To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: [CR]Bruce Gordon 1983 show bike on eBay
One can only imagine how nice this bike must look in person. Nice lug accents, black anodized components with gold-plated parts, etc.
Don't you love it when someone puts a beautiful $5,000 show bike up for
auction (with the obvious expectation of making some serious coinage)
and
includes only three small crappy photos?
>> "I am not really a bike person..."
You think? ;-)
Bob Hovey
Columbus, GA USA
http://bhovey.com/
> Subject: [CR]Bruce Gordon 1983 show bike on eBay
>
>
> eBay # 260257422887
>
> "I am not really a bike person but what I was told is that this bike
> was originally purchased at the New York Bike Show in 1983 for
$5,000.
> The serial number on the frame is C 030 183."
>
> No relation to seller.
>
> Mordecai Silver
> NYC
>
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