Mark,
Good point! Bringing in bikes is a thought. I had always thought that the numbers on the second scanned page of the book(Set 2) were three numbers, followed by a placeholder "D" or "0", so I assumed that mine could logically be 1036th with a "0" placeholder. How else could he have gone from 717 on 6/10/75 to 13,003 on 8/11/1980? I have not done the exact math, but that would be about 6 frames a day, everyday of the week. His books certainly do not match that pace.
So, my next question is "Does anybody recognize anything that might indicate who may have been building the frames for him?"
Matt Beecher Yorkville, IL
On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 11:35 PM, Mark Bulgier <bulgiest@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> 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/
> was in July 1975, and they'd only gotten up to number 775.
>
> 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