SNIPPED: 2. Frank does distinctly engage in hyperbole in his For Sale notice, the forced superlatives of which might be appropriate for the less sophisticated Ebay customer, but are a bit hard to take here on the CR-list. Maybe a bit less hype would encourage fewer retorts? :)
Dale Brown Greensboro, NC USA http://www.classicrendezvous.com ================ Dale,
While this is your list and I am but a free-loading guest, I would attempt to have this same discussion if we were face-to-face.
You state that I "distinctly engage in hyperbole in his For Sale notice, the forced superlatives of which might be appropriate for the less sophisticated Ebay customer, but are a bit hard to take here on the CR-list. Maybe a bit less hype would encourage fewer retorts? :)"
I stated in the listing "What an opportunity to own a truly unique frameset!". As stated earlier, I have never in my many years of bike interest seen a DeRosa Super Prestige painted in this exact color scheme, and evidently neither has my more esteemed fellow list member Lou Deeter (who by the way used to have a red white and blue Spectrum he rode on the 4th of July).
Dale, perhaps you could do me a favor and point out to me what portion of this for sale listing is hyperbole, which is defined as "an extravagant exaggeration used as a figure of speech." Is this the sentence, "What an opportunity to own a truly unique frameset!", that you refer to as the "hyperbole"? If so, where is the extravagant exaggeration in that statement?
I dare say there is less salesmanship in my listing than in your very own recent for sale listing for a Magni-Ferrari where you claimed "This is a very desirable, infrequently seen, top model from Switzerland in splendid, verging on showroom condition. Workmanship, dare I say, superior to many if not most marques discussed here on the CR? Please look at the photos. With a little spit & polish, this could be a Concours winner as well."
I am not criticizing your choice of words for your for sale posting, as I be lieve it is through our descriptions of our bikes that the passion we have for these older lugged bikes shows so strongly, but perhaps "hyperbole" is in the eye of the beholder.
While I am on this topic, let me say that Maaslands's comment seemed to me to serve no positive purpose. If he had a question as to what I saw in this DeRosa that made it unique, he could have sent me an e-mail rather than just posting a snippy note to the list. Or, he could have at least copied me on the note asking for me to provide my rationale, but he didn't do that either. Absent that, I replied on-list and now you replied on-list and now I am replying on-list, all probably to the benefit of nobody. Maybe we can all agree that if we have a question about someone's choice of words, we could contact them privately for an explanation.
Frank Phillips
McAlester, OK