First off I am not sure if this is the right forum for this question. I am looking to purchase an early 90's Gueriotti frame off someone and it is made of columbus brain tubing and has the Varished by Dessena Carlos option. I looked all over for info on this frame and can't find any. There is no model name or number on the frame so I am kind of lost. Its bottom bracket is a cinelli if that is any kind of reference. My question is what would be a good price to offer him for it. It is in perfect shape almost new he never built it up. Any info or help would be apprecitated.

Thanks,
Gregg

'guch's had a popular period in the middle 70's. For some reason I would consider its a repaint....

I will step in for East Hill here....

Where's the pictures?

And what it the Varished by Dessena Carlos option?

brain was Columbus' midlevel tubeset ,produced from Cyclex rather than the more sophisticated Nivacrom steels- this category of frameset's appeal will be for use as a classy user rather than as an high demand object d'arte to the collector. For a 2nd-tier Guerciotti of early/mid-90's vintage, I'd expect to pay *somewhere between* a figure of about $250-275 for a very well cared for but obviously used frameset with zero issues on up to maybe $425-450, for an unusually pretty/desireable & immaculately pristine , NOS frameset.

Thank you very much!

I think gregg-o means 'Varnished by', i.e., painted by Dossena Carlos.

Should be a really interesting paint job, so I know I would like to see it. The implication here is that it is probably an upper end bike, although caterham knows more about the tubing quality than I do. But someone spent a lot of money for the painting.

East Hill

I wondered if he meant varnished. The only thing I found for varished in a google was a fly fishing site.

YES I MEANT VARNISHED. Thanks for the correction, now I could use more info if you have any. Thanks caterham for your help.

Thanks,
Gregg

I reckon caterham has provided all the info any expert can...until we see pictures Like East Hill says: the paint jobs done by Carlo Dossena (varnish by dossena carlo) were typically very stylish and elaborate, with multiple color airbrushed and swirly marblized effects prevalent. Search the thread on "Titan of Switzerland" frames to see a lot of pics of his paint. I'm not sure if I spelled Carlo's name correctly, but you might get the title of this one right: GUERCIOTTI (helps others to search for it later)

???

https://cgi.ebay.com/GUERCIOTTI-COLUM...QQcmdZViewItem

Very similar to the one on e-bay but it is silver with more red like the querciotti red that they use. I was thinking of offering the guy $300 for it.

haha /\ ok man, and my Friend has a rash somewhere. lol

About Carlo Dossena he is a craftsman located in a small town close to Milano (Settimo Milanese).
he worked in the Alfa Romeo factory (painted the GTVs?) from 1961 thru 1985. Since then he has
been painting bicycles, mostly single order custom paintjobs (hey Dr. D sound familiar?) but he
has done large orders in the past (i.e. titan frames).
Some of his more recent work can be seen here:
https://www.docar.it/galleria.htm

Marty

I just looked at the eBay auction and was really quite impressed with the Guerciotti shown on auction-the paint scheme and the quality of frame detailing is quite extraordinary and atypical for a Brain tubeset bike . Enuf so that I'd revise my cursory intial estimate to approx. the $450 level on up to maybe as much as $ 525 for such a NOS frameset and in as clean condition as you describe.
I should also expand that while Brain was positioned as a value oriented tube, it's ride qualities are exceptional and it represents an evolutionary step beyond Columbus' earlier top line tubes such as SL/SP, SLX/SPX, TSX, etc.- Brain only lacked in prestige,and gave up only a smidge in weight to the flagship Genius tubing of the time. Tho now discontinued in the Columbus lineup, it is still a useful,viable and desireable tubing for a quality high performance bike.

Same paint scheme (different colors though) as my EL-tubed '90s Guerc':



Mine doesn't have the Dossena Carlo logo though.

-Kurt

oops i bought your frame!