Aaron Olk wrote:
> I'm no expert, but I owned a Team Romic and the lugs were chunky and
> unimpressive for a custom bike. I've seen two others, both also had lugwork
> that could easily be confused with mass produced stuff. It actually is
> comparable to the Romics I've seen.
>
OK, I've come around and I now think you're right.
There are intriguing clues from the serial number. According to Rich Pinder, (http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~rpinder/RomicConstruction.html) the format is a straight serial (the number of frames built to date) followed by the date as MMDDYY.
That would mean Matt's, 10360121076, would have been built near the end of
1976 and was the 10,360th frame made. Romic started in mid- '74 and the
serial numbers indicate they sold over 14,000 frames, but that took until
2004. I doubted they could have gotten up to 10,360 after just two and a
half years or making frames by hand. The last entry in the build-book page
shown here:
http://www-hsc.usc.edu/
One possibility I haven't heard anyone mention is maybe Romic brought in a bunch of Asian-built frames and private-labeled them. That could explain how he got from #775 in July '75 to over ten thousand in December of '76.
I just noticed the next page from the build-book, from 1980, (http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~rpinder/images/RomicBook3.jpg) shows them as being up to #13,003, which would actually tend to agree with the idea that Matt's is a Romic!. I just can't believe it was hand-made in Texas.
Mark Bulgier
Seattle, WA
USA