Perhaps I was a bit hasty not desiring a price guide. It is not as though I check Amazon daily for the latest printings. As my first post reflected I compared the price guide to the ones used for pricing and valuing vintage firearms (Barrons magazine recently recognized firearms as a significant and lucrative portfolio option). Over the years I gleaned a tremendous amount of information from the differing price guides, granted many times I had wished most sellers had never seen a guide. What bothered me was the publication took away the personal valuation each party would, on their own, decide the price. This is where I , and I suppose , many of you derive the pleasure of the pursuit and trade. If we end up with a guide, someone will have to begin the publication. That in and of itself is a daunting task....what will you include, what will you leave out? These are serious questions that have to be answered by the individual, who may have a limited,knowledge base, a limited budget, and a personal bias. No..dont ask me to start. Hell......ask Dale.. He can thank me later. BT
Mitch Harris <mitch.harris@gmail.com> wrote: Agreed that a price guide for bikes is a different sort of problem than for collectible guns or watches. Mike, I think, mentioned how many more bike makes there are, even compared to watches. But unlike guns and watches, for example, a bike frame is encrusted with a coule dozen other potentially collectible that each have their own highly variable collector value and their own highly variable condition.
Even though guns can be reduces to components too, and occasionally someone might collect a gun in order to use a part off of it for another collectible gun, this is rare compared to bike collecting, and guns tend to stay as whole items and not get parted out. (There are a few exceptions to this, but it's rare that someone sets out to build a gun from parts, as we all do all the time with bikes.)
Same for watches, even though someone might by a trashed Omega for it's properly labeled backplate destined for another Omega that has the wrong one. Still, there is nothing like the propensity for this like there is for parting out bikes.
Given an immense amount of time, one would could produce a price guide for frames/forks, and for each component type, including the oft mentioned 1st gen S.Record rear der. The situation where one enounters a original complete bike that can be valued all as one thing, and whose condition can be assessed holistically is more rare. We tend to talk about these, though, the recent Masi vs. Herse racer thread, that lovely 1968 Pogliaghi that recently switched hands on list via ebay. When less stellar bikes are offered whole, they get looked at not as a bike for sale but as an assemblage of bike components for sale.
--Mitch Harris Little Rock Canyon, UT _______________________________________________
Bruce Thomson Spokane WA 99204 (509) 747 4314 Masi3v4me@yahoo.com
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