Hi, just seen your bike, looks beautiful, lovely paintwork, I have a similar bike to yours, mines a Bianchi minimax in celeste, bought from ebay.
When I first took delivery I was very unsure of the origins of the frame, but because I believed it to be similar to Columbus EL, I bought it, now I find it isnt similar, only maybe in weight.
Minimax was the first nivacrom frameset made by Columbus, I confirmed what I had was minimax by trawling the web and finding references to what the frame should look like.
There are visual clues that cannot be replicated, or not very easily, these are the bottom bracket drainage hole, different makes have different shapes, minimax is quite easy to spot from shape of tubes, horizontal at the seat post, and vertical at headtube, seat stays and chain stays are also oval, no lugwork on the minimax, whereas the max tubes had quite intricate lugwork, anything pantographed would be very difficult to copy I would guess, weight of the frame should be about 1.7kg with forks for a 23.5" frame, ciocc been mid 90s italian will probably have italian bottom bracket, headtube, mine had fully chromed frame with paint over, which must of been expensive at the time.
