Originally Posted by alanbikehouston
When restoring any "old" collectible, you always face the issue of what is your goal? To keep it as original as possible? To make it as usable as possible?
And, of course, we can always end up owning "Jim Bowie's knife".
The story goes that a kid shows up a school for "show and tell" with a locked box. He opens the box, and says, "this knife was Jim Bowie's personal knife, that he carried at the Alamo". The teacher asks, "This is the EXACT knife Jim Bowie owned?"
And the kid says, "Yes, this is the exact knife...but my great-grandfather did have to replace the old blade when it got rusty, and my grandfather had to replace the old handle when the wood started to rot...but other than the blade and the handle, this is the exact same knife Jim Bowie took to the Alamo..."
That's funny. A coworker of mine has a bike like that - an early 70's Gitane he bought new, their second from top of the line model (Tour de France maybe?). He cracked the frame shortly thereafter and Gitane replaced it. Then later he picked up a wrecked Nuovo Record equiped bike and swapped all of the components over. Then he swapped some stuff to more modern components in later years. He's pretty sure there not one part on it from the original bike he bought. He had it painted a nice metallic blue but no decals and uses it as his commuter.
I'm almost in that situation - I had an old Bottecchia back in the 70's. I crashed it in the late 90's and it wasn't worth repairing so I tossed it but I did save the rear wheel. But even that had been relaced in the 70's so only the hub is original. Then I bought another Bottecchia a while back - same color, same decals - now all I have to do is build up a wheel with that hub and I'll have my old bike back. Just like Jim Bowie's knife.
