Dave Patrick offered these forks for sale for $80:
http://www.flickr.com/
> So to sum up, these are Tange Prestige bladed forks w/nice
> vintage-style flat Hitachi crown (as used by Richard Sachs in the
> past).
I know those forks well because we used hundreds of them when I worked at Davidson in the 80s. I still have the touring version of it on my daily commuter. They're really nice and Dave's price is amazing - buy 'em.
I love that crown -- it's the crown I chose for my own personal road race bike. Strictly speaking it is not a Hitachi crown but rather a Takahashi crown, though Takahashi subcontracted the casting to Hitachi - minor quibble, sorry I mentioned it. ;) Takahashi calls it HNR for Hitachi Nagasawa Road, because it was designed by venerated craftsman Nagasawa for his road forks, and cast by Hitachi. Truly superior castings, not really surpassed by anything to this day in my opinion. It's much like the DeRosa crown, of which you might say it's an homage if not exactly a copy...
I don't think Dave's forks are Tange Prestige though, I'd bet they're Tange Champion No.1. Dave, if you have strong reason to think they're Prestige I'll defer to that, but the finish on the blades is not like the Prestige blades I've used over a thousand of. It's conceivable that Tange could have made Prestige blades with the Champion finish, but all the similar forks Davidson got were Champion.
This is not a bad thing! Champion is very good stuff, equivalent to Reynolds 531 or Columbus SL, actually a little better in some ways. The only difference between Prestige and Champion No.1 blades and steerers (besides the finish, which disappears under the paint and is thus completely moot to the consumer), is Prestige is heat-treated to make it stronger. The Prestige fork parts are not lighter*, they started life as Champion tubes that then got the extra heat-treat. The heat-treat does NOT affect the ride quality one bit -- despite some folks claims to the contrary. (Their "perception" of a difference is explainable only by placebo effect.) *Well, Tange did offer a slightly thinner-lighter Prestige blade, later (mid-90s), but almost no one used them -- manufacturers stuck with the standard 0.9 mm Prestige blade. And at the time these forks Dave is selling were made, all Prestige blades were the same thickness/weight as Champion No.1.
Champion forks are strong enough for any but the heaviest riders, and stronger is not necessarily a good thing here. For instance on a classic lightweight frame, having a fork too strong could make the frame buckle and be ruined, in many real-world collisions where the frame would not have buckled if the fork had taken the impact by bending. I really like to see a bent fork after a crash, it shows the fork did its job. That's one reason I like steel forks over CF, which can't absorb crash energy by bending.
Mark Bulgier
Seattle WA USA