Dale wrote :
> they pay no attention to how long the brakes have been sitting there as
> compared to cranks (or whatever). It just didn't matter to them. Nor did
> it matter to us in the bike shop. Upon receipt and installation on a
> frame, we just bolted stuff on. We all had no idea that future
> enthusiasts would be matching numbers so carefully!
Nor did we, on the left side of the country. The seemingly random serial numbers of Cinelli frames is
another unsolveable mystery. Since I built the registry in 1999, I've explained the lack of pattern
to hundreds of mystified new Cinelli owners. No sequence No pattern. No correlation to date or
anything else. They are astonished. Jaws go slack. "B..But.what if you reverse the digits and do a
3rd order polynomial expansion and then convert to Base 6 ? Have you looked at that ?"
I smile. Got an email from a prospective ebay bidder on an auction I'm running. He asks
** "does it have the "<C>" marking on it? "**
No, I replied, it just says Patent Campagnolo Italy.
I actually think that this need for order, this obsession with detail takes us away from the essence of the sport.
Forget about how cool it is to speed downhill on a beautiful day with the tires humming and the sunlight
winking thru the trees - instead let's worry about finding crankarms with matching date codes.
In my view at least that's not what collecting or being a connoisseur is all about, but maybe it's because those
concerned with such things have nothing better to do!
>From the catapult of
Mark Petry
Bainbridge Island, WA