Originally Posted by
miamijim
This shows what I was trying to say earlier. We'd all like to think out favorite builder is in the workshop with his torch building frames and we want to believe he built the very frame we're riding.
In reality a lone builder can only build so many frames during a single year and that number isnt many.
We can guess all we want at how many frames our favorite builders built but thats all we can do, guess. Its probably less than we think and different that what the builders tell us. Remember, they want us to think they held the torch, otherwise there's no panache.
And, as I said earlier, you overstated your case. For one thing, you just now stated what "We'd all like to think ... " You don't speak for "all of us." Some of us know that, for example, Masi made considerable use of subcontractors, and in some cases you can even tell who those folks likely were. Doesn't devalue Masis at all, as far as I can tell, and they still have plenty of "panache." The folks who pay big money for the better examples are in fact the very folks who know this stuff. You apparently think all vintage bike collectors suffer from the same degree of collective naivete. I can assure you that's not the case. There are also some of us who know enough about De Rosa to know De Rosa was a small-volume, custom-oriented shop longer than many other "big-name" Italian producers, and Ugo himself was more directly involved for longer in the actual building of the frames than, say, Masi or Colnago. I think there's real "value" in that - and it's reflected in the sales prices of the bikes. It informs my opinion of De Rosa and of the bikes. In your hast to make your point, you seem to have missed the fact that there is a big difference between a master builder who carefully oversees the work in his shop and "OK's" each frame before it goes out with his name on it, and one who simply subcontracts and never sees what winds up arriving at a distributor or retailer. You derided the idea that De Rosa was a "boutique" (i.e. small-volume, high-quality, custom-oriented, hand-craft) shop with a photo that was itself a piece of the very "propaganda" you decry. How do you know the real "propaganda" in that brochure wasn't the fact that they're trying to portray De Rosa as the "savvy businessman" heading up his firm, when in fact they had to drag him out of his smock and out of the back room in order to pose him that way? While very knowledgeable concerning some aspects of vintage bikedom, you clearly lack knowledge of De Rosa in particular. And you still haven't directly responded to the points I made in my last post. I have no interest in feuding over this - I understand your basic point, and if you read my posts carefully, I think you'll see I'm substantially in accord with it. But trying to make it using De Rosa as your example, without more specificity about the period of De Rosa history you were referring to, badly missed the mark. I seriously doubt that the number of bikes De Rosa personally built is "less than" I think, and in addition, I have no illusions about their quality. Some are exquisite; some are frankly pretty mediocre. But I would respectfully suggest doing some real homework before trying to myth-bust by posting a single piece of "evidence."