Originally Posted by bbpo8

OP here... By studying pages on Bike Forums and similar sites, as well as old bike catalogs, I collected some Rules of Thumb about assessing older bikes. Most of the information was on geared steel road bikes, so that's what I concentrated on... They helped me make sense of the hundreds of bikes available online... Since the Bike Forums had helped me, I thought I would give something back... So thank you for your responses, all of them.