Yer the more i'm looking into it there is only going to be a small price difference between a new fixed hub and a converted hub.
About the europe road bike thought, actually you'd be quite surprised. Its quite rare that I see a road bike, and when I do it tends to be worth £1000's and ridden by someone going through their midlife crisis. It was still quite a find really, most of the dumps just have a load of mountain bikes, and a few buckled/bent/rusted road bikes. It seems that during the 70's when there was a boom in road bikes most of them were shipped over to the states.