This scarcity was largely caused by President Nixon's price freeze to control the rampant inflation at the time. Imported goods were caught with whatever foreign exchange shifts occurred and the importers could not raise the prices, so the sources dried up. This also resulted on a one year or so backlog for Schwinn Paramount orders because the price was little more than the parts! I presume Schwinn had the parts on hand but was reluctant to or couldn't rush out the orders at that price. The freeze did not last too long but it had a dramatic effect at a time when inflation was very high and the price of imported goods through the early 70's years went up 60-100%.
Joe
At 11:01 AM 3/18/01 EST, OROBOYZ@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 3/18/01 2:56:18 AM Eastern Standard Time, davidg@iag.net
>writes:
>
><< The 1973 Campy catalog (No. 17) has a Super Record derailleur listed >>
>
>I think when Chuck Schmidt, Gabe Konrad and I were working on aspects of the
>Campy Time Line, we finally researched the issue and discovered that the SR
>group, including the derailleur, was introduced in the fall of 1973 and
>winter 1974 at the various trade shows.
>
>The components as previewed did not make it into actual production as
>displayed. One of the differences were the black colored chain rings which
>were reported as being a strange new alloy and "black clear through." They
>ended up being silver aluminum ally as we now know. The preview rear
>derailleur was pretty much the same in its production form.. BUT the reality
>was that the consumer (non pro-team, etc.) might not have had the ability to
>purchase a SR group for at least a year after the introduction. So
>functionally the SR stuff was really distributed until maybe 1975ish...
>
>I remember in the early 1970s it was extremely hard for bike shops to even
>buy normal Campagnolo parts at times, supplies were scarce and fought over.
>In maybe 1973, I remember trying to find a set of NR brakes for a
customer...
>No distributor had them for sale after months of searching...finally I found
>a set available at the wholesale price of $100.00, which was about half of
>the total price (wholesale) for most complete Pro bikes! Outrageous!
Actually
>that was also the normal retail price if you could fin then so that
>particular distributor was sorta profiteering because of the scarcity of the
>parts.
>
>There may have been a strike about then at Campy or something because I
think
>that was when Raleigh came out with the well known RRA (re-using an old
>name) which featured mostly all French parts. The word was that they could
>not deliver Pros and Internationals adequately so introduced this yellow and
>white model to address the need for high end models.
>
>Dale Brown
>Greensboro, North Carolina