Your MASI is a truly representative product of its era. If you were alive in the 1970's (i was a little kid), you probably recall that the 1970's was a decade of rising unemployment, oil shocks, "stagflation", police cutbacks, and rising crime . After the 1973 oil shock bicycles gained new status as essential modes of transportation.
About the only thing that people could do to protect themselves and their critical transportation engrave their possessions with SSI or driver's license number. I remember frequent TV commercials for "Operation Identification" that urged all citizens to engrave their valuables !!!
Hopefully the MASI was engraved with a cheesy dremel tool which was also a new innovation at the time. This engraving would not doubt authenticate the MASI parts as all totally original in a way that any serious collector could appreciate.
The use of a $30 tool to deface every component of an Italian $600 racing bike is perhaps something that will never happen again in our lifetimes. This bike is truly a product of its era. I wish that _MY_ 1970's bikes had such a profound mark of authenticity !!!
- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA