i'm sure jan will chime in but i believe it's a combination of dustcaps, logo stampings, and the style of fluting and finish of the crankarms that distinguishes them as early..
andrei padlowski
in
new york, new york
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> So it's hard to generalize. However, when you look at prices for early Campy
> Gran Sport derailleurs, perhaps Eddie paid for the cranks alone, and got a
> free frame in the bargain.
>
Jan, you commented in an earlier post on this same beautiful bike about the prewar Stronglight crankset on the Caminargent. Now I have no idea whatever how to tell a prewar 49D from a postwar example of this cycling icon, I've seen those style dust caps on bikes that might be prewar or slightly postwar, but the arms themselves look essentially the same (with slight and seemingly temporally inconsistent variations) to my untrained eye. I think the logo stamping lost its "MARQUE" for a period in the '50s and certain dustcap variations seem to roughly correspond to various eras, but how do you come to the conclusion from those small photos that this is a presumably rarer and more valuable pre-war version? You could frankly probably take a '70s iteration, patinate it with oxidation, screw in the '40s-style dustcaps and fool me completely.
Kurt Sperry
Bellingham, Washington
USA