Buddy and I were talking about this on our last ride on Katy last weekend. Mainly the 'elitism' that the carbon has brought to the average cyclists and over time how much it cost to just get started riding. Really, a $2500 bike from a bike shop...really isn't getting much, heavy wheels, inferior components, and thrown together and not guaranteed to fit you specifically. Its overall sad that to get a true fit, a custom set up, nice wheels/grouppo, your talking about as much as a car (back in my day). So in some ways, it drives some away from looking further, and for likeminded of myself, I look to resource the good stuff that everyone else sees as useless....classic/vintage throw away.
Every bike shop has a throw away bin, typically, they empty them out at the end of a year or season, and for me, its like xmas going in and looking.
VeloOrange, I have bought stuff, but it is a sorta knock off, its new granted and glad it 'was' there, but I don't think their goods were as pleasing as the originals they replaced if you know what I mean. Some of the components on bikes are simply too hard to find now, so sometimes I have had to grab what is available to make it work.
Nonetheless, I think the classic/vintage thing is like old cars, like some have referred to, we now are in an era that for a large part these goodies are all around us, ie parts, frames etc and we can fill our garages up with all kinds of stuff, but they are disappearing being replaced in some ways with some very good stuff too. I live on Rt 66 in the midwest, and there was a time you could drive it any given day and see old 50s cars in a driveway and all the old timers here bought them up like crazy....and now they are gone. Its hard to believe to me my shimano 600 stuff i put on my first race bike is now vintage, but the 7700 dura ace i later replaced it with was a great grouppo as well (perhaps my 2nd favorite to 7800) and I am just saying the technology over time has been very good to us, with some funny exceptions...and costly...exceptions (my sram force grouppo was the worst ever). We have the luxury of looking back now and buying up the good stuff that we KNOW worked...flawlessly and buy it, rebuild it, heck, much of the time just clean it and put it on.
My favorite lately is I am picking up all the tubular tyres and wheelsets I can, while I can, since the tubeless gig is really taking hold, the marketeers are trying to sell the death of tubular and tubes hoops/tyres...so, I'll buy the good stuff while I can
hope you all do too