Classic and Vintage Bicycles: What's it Worth? Appraisals and Inquiries - Schwinn Paramount Series Question

There is a frame on my local craigslist. One photo, doesn't show much. Purported to be a "Waterford" Paramount from 1989. I am thinking it is actually one of the Asian-built PDG Series bikes.

Serial # is K743289 which seems to support my guess. The Waterford website indicates that U.S.-built Paramounts have much longer serial numbers for that year and that the imports had serial #'s that did not match up to the numbering system used here.

The frame has been painted, so color and decals aren't going to help.

Does anyone have a way to determine which level of PDG Series this bike might have been?

Should still have date code on the head badge, so you can know the year pretty easily. The best of the imported Paramounts were made in Japan by National/Panasonic, lower end models came from Taiwan and eventually China. I didn't think the Series Paramount Road bikes came out until 1991, I am definitely not sure (and catalogs are no guarantee, like my two 1987 Prologues (Prologue did not appear in the catalog until 1988). I've got a 1991 Series III, and a 1992 Series V, along with a 1986 Waterford.

To me, once a Series Paramount has been repainted, the value really drops. The cost of a quality repaint and rebadge will approach/exceed the value of the paint. And some of the paint schemes would be difficult/extremely costly to match, like my 1992 Series V. I don't see much value there, unless the components are really sweet (and IMHO, one of the biggest weaknesses of the Series Paramounts were the low end components used on many of them: my Series III came with RX100, and the Series V came with Shimano 105).

Bill, you are obviously correct, I forgot that from the website. Series bikes began production in 1991. So this is a Paramount, but I still think it is an import.

I told the seller that due to it having been repainted, I wasn't interested. Don't know what the quality of the repaint was, but if I am going to buy a painted frame, I want to have it painted myself in a color of my choosing.