I think that a frame built by a top framebuilder for Murray or Huffy, and originally decaled as a Murray or Huffy is exactly that, in the same way that a Rivendell is exactly that, even though Grant never built one of them. The top Raleigh frames (team issue, etc.) were built in a different shop by different builders than the more common frames, but they are still Raleighs, and a Confente-built Masi is still a Masi. Most of the top builders got their starts building for someone else, and I don't think the identity of their early frames is changed just because the builder went on to be well-known under his own name. I guess the only "requirement" I would set would be that someone at the company whose name appears on the bike had to devote some thought to the desired attributes of the bike, or the purpose for which it was to be used, and communicate this to the framebuilder. I guess, then, I would exclude from my definition of "geniune" a bike already being made and/or sold under one name that had different decals slapped on with no other changes (like Merckx's hour record "Windsor"). I think I would also exclude the "Peugeots" ridden by Merckx, as evidently Peugeot had nothing to do with specifying to Ugo DeRosa the desired quality of the frame. On the other hand, I think it is fair to call the frames Eddy rode most of his career Merckx frames, as Eddy no doubt had considerable input into their design. I am assuming someone at Murray and at Huffy gave some serious thought to the bikes commissioned for LeMonde, for the 7-11 team, etc. I would think such bikes would be considerably more valuable with the original decals than with decals of the actual builder. These bikes did, after all, represent a commendable effort by at least some individuals at Huffy and Murray to build really high quality bikes, even if the effort was all too brief.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
-----Original Message----- From: Mark Poore [mailto:rauler47@hotmail.com] Sent: Sunday, June 10, 2001 8:44 AM To: Classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: [CR]Confente on ebay, and a thought or two about same
Huffy? This is why I did say maybe, because I did know that their name did appear on some Olympic frames. The question is, Are they to really be considered Huffys? If Richard built frames for Murray, would they be considered Murrys or a Sach? Several years ago there was a fellow that came to our resort that worked for Huffy out of Ohio. He did have with him a Huffy, if you could call it that and he did, road bike. The frame was a beautiful piece of work. At this time I forget who built the frame, but I believe it was a well known American frame builder. The fellow was very proud of his Huffy. I saw it as a nice bike with Huffy decals.
The question I have at this time: would the Huffy decals decrease or increase or not effect the value of the bike? Any thought on this?
BTW, there was a Columbia bike on ebay just a while ago that went up for auction twice that couldn't fetch a decent price although the frame was built by a respected frame builder. I actually bid on the bike, but held my bid rather low.
Could you imagine if Confente had built a few bikes under the Sears name?