luker

Says he's closing his eBay store in January...going to a new venue without seller's fees. Anyone know what he's talking about?

el twe

His own online store?

Bikedued

With his feedback, I would be hesitant order from him. I am tempted to though, since he seems to be the only one who has Sante hoods. ,,,,BD

CV-6 

He has a new eBay ID. cyclustoolsusa

dbakl

Hmmm, I've bought a lot of stuff from him over the years, sometimes slow, but never a problem, and he's got the ****z!

luker

but...he's slow. Maybe his own website - that would fix the seller's fees. but, when he says new venue I think of another online auction service. Maybe it is only my imagination...er, ah, wishful thinking. Somewhere they would not ignore fraud...

Dr.Deltron

Agree with you 100%!

I was explaining to my wife my amusement at that seller...

He doesn't sell a NOS 1st generation Campy Rally rear deraileur for $175-$200
NOOooooo
The outer cage plate is BIN for $95! (as is the inner cage plate)
The attachment bolt is BIN $65
Reach adjustment screws..$45
Rally body..$125
Internal spring
Pulleys
Cable anchor bolt

You get the idea

(and this's purely my own humble opinion btw)

But he gets 5 Bills for the deraileur in the long run, and all the silly saps in need of "just that one little piece" are happy as clams. (me included)

And that kind of meticulosity is never in a hurry!

I'll be interested to know the new venue, I just need this one little part to finish the....

Butcher

www.cafedevelo.com
That's the new venue [as per his email that he sent to me]. I too have bought some stuff from him and he is too slow [but I am in no hurry usually].

Bikedued

Yep gotta be him, look at the prices. Good luck to him. Hope he ships faster now that he owns the site he's on.,,,,BD

sykerocker 

My guess is don't count on it - despite the grumbling about shipping time buyers still buy from him, so he's doing something right in the customer's eyes. And until sales fall off, he's got no reason to change.

stronglight

If some folks are not familiar with this seller, let me fill in a brief outline.

Baron Corpuz and his wife Cecile had lived for many years in Holland. From there, they would frequently hop around neighboring parts of Europe and buy out small failed or long closed shops and would sell much of the rare goods from their own small shop and from their online website - which was in fact set up quite early in the game and before they entered eBay as an additional outlet. This business was known as Renaissance Cycles. I had made numerous purchases from this resource and always had reasonable shipping times from clear across the atlantic. Then, some time back, a fire destroyed their home and business, and they decided to move (back?) to the US where they have grown children living.

They opened up a beautiful retail shop in Santa Barbara specializing in top quality vintage bikes, components and accessories, as had been their specialty overseas. Their problems soon arose from almost simultaneously moving to the US, setting up a new home, scrambling to open up an actual shop, and trying to maintain their extensive eBay listings. Baron (Banana Brain) wound up returning to Europe briefly around a year ago where he had to almost single handedly pack up and see to the shipping arrangements of 3 full container loads of newly purchased vintage small parts for shipping to the US (Think of packing, cataloging and moving 3 complete Semi loads of small components, etc. by yourself). This is when shipments to eBay customers and others all began to bottleneck.

He became ill, due to basically simple exhaustion, and his wife trying to handle all of the paperwork and the household and the shop was totally out of her element now too. They eventually had to temporarily actually close their retail store doors and also hire additional help just to catch up on their online orders. The shop was re-opened in the Spring and I've heard it is a beautiful place for a vintage bike enthuaiast to stop and browse, and drool over some of the very rare and beautiful items.

FWIW, I very much suspect they do not actually strip down perfectly good complete components. I have personally bought some very small odd parts, and they were always still in their original factory parts packaging. Yes, there was once an actual flow of replacement component parts from manufacturers, especially companies like Weinmann and Campagnolo, simply because components did not tend to change every season and were actually designed to be re-buildable and maintainable for years. Sadly, this is a concept pretty much lost since the 1980s & 90s.

Anyway, without intending to be an apologist for the seller - from whom I too have indeed definitely experienced the frustration and annoyance of spotty shipping from time to time - I find that he and his wife are actually sincere and even personable individuals who have every intention and hope of serving their customers and building up a growing customer base. At very least, they do know the vintage bike components they are selling (rather than some eBayers who have no idea of what they bay have found in a closed shop they simply bought out as an investment), they are not deceptive about what they are selling, and are not vanishing eBay merchants with virtual stores - they actually have a bricks and morter business, if anyone actually wanted to personally stop by to complain, to return an item, or hopefully to simply chat.

Unfortunately, I find their prices seem excessively (and for me prohibitively) high. But, I may be just still living in a dream world of prices which once were, and which I sadly may never see again.

As they say, your experience may vary, but that's the basic scoop as I know it.

Bob

Bikedued

Sincere and personable? Their bad feedback responses always end in a soup nazi'esque type "BLOCKED". "No parts for you, NEXT" lol. I guess it's like most things online, people seldom act the same in person.,,,,BD

John E

My knowledge of the Corpuz family business closely matches stronglight's description, and my experience with them has been positive, albeit occasionally slow or pricey. If you need a rare part and are willing to support what the market will bear, instead of believing you have some sort of entitlement, I would recommend Baron and Cecile highly. They are ethical, and they are performing a valuable service for all of us who care about vintage bicycles but who do not have the time or money to hunt down rare parts in Europe.

caterham

I've been doing business with bananabrain since before his relocation to the us. 'Always had positive experiences, albeit his pricing isn't the cheapest. However, he's come thru for me with odd and rare parts that I'd been unable to obtain after months and , in one instance, after years of searching. Hard to quibble over a few bucks when he's been able to supply what others couldn't or wouldn't.

norskagent

wow I feel better about scoring one of their colnago chrome forks from their ebay shop...It's $160 on their website, I won it for $85 + it shipped in days. Also, a NOS super record brakeset on their website is $590!
This is my franken-retro-bott:

lotek 

despite the sometimes slow shipping I have the utmost respect for Baron and Cecile, and they have
always come through with hard to find parts.
I have a feeling that in a sense they do things in an old fashioned way and in these internet instant
gratification times buyers forget this fact and negative feedback results. Don't get me wrong, I've
heard the "horror" stories of multi month waits but they seem to be the exception, not the norm.
I just bought Cristophe toe clips and yellow straps from them, arrived here in less than a week, good
price and who could ask for more than that?
seems like not too long ago if you wanted vintage parts on the internet, Renaissance and Bananabrain
were the only ways to go.

marty........................................................and the gang!

Grand Bois

Speaking of eBay sellers, has anyone else noticed that the Sultan of Schwag has been inactive for a long time? He's my favorite seller of used parts. They were always clean and well photographed and I enjoyed reading his listings. I had nothing but good experiences buying from him.

stronglight

It's rather funny. I recall one framebuilder laughingly referring to the bulk of the Classic Rendezvous gang as the stingiest cheapest people he had ever dealt with. I thought this was simply a silly and completely joking statement - considering some of the pretty costly rarities some collectors had accumulated in their vast stables. Now I begin to understand the truth of this.

As a self proclaimed old fart (or at least a steadily ageing one), I am often stalled in a mindset of what prices once were and what I would like them to still be today. And, at the same time I regularly see many 20-30 year old cyclists casually dropping 5 or 6 thousand bucks for what strikes me as simply a rather boring modern bike which will be of little worth in only a few years. And, I'm also often stunned with the seemingly bottomless wallets of some Japanese collectors. I am still wide-eyed at seeing a 45 year old Peugeot racing bike slowly inch it's way up through dozens of incremental bids on ebay to what, realistically, is only the cost of a rather decent yet mundane modern TREK or Cannondale.

I don't have the disposable income to really indulge all of my lustful bike desires or even to bid a couple grand for a vintage bike on eBay. So, I content myself scrambling for bargain finds. ~ I suspect that in the REAL world "BananaBrain's" prices are really not that outrageous after all.

retyred

I was wondering the same thing. Where is the Sultan? Perhaps in search of vintage parts in Europe?

dbakl

Yeah, I've been playing with these bikes for over 30 years, I am amazed at what prices have become. However, I've gotten some small stuff from banana brain that I've looked for for years, so, worth it at any price I guess. But I'm sometimes amazed at the amount of stuff I've accumulated!

Grand Bois

I think he has always bought whole bikes and parted them out. Maybe his source of cheap, high quality bikes dried up.

MalcolmsFrejus

I bought a set of white Sante hoods this spring from Banana Brain. I don't think they cost more than $20 w/shipping. Sometimes they auction stuff cheaper than you can buy it in the "store". Anyway, IIRC the wait wasn't too long, maybe 2 1/2 weeks?. I also bought some 600 hoods that took a month.

If you can locate hoods for the original grey painted 600 levers (6401) they fit Sante also. I only know because I'm using the Sante hoods on the 600 levers. They fit fine.

retyred

Now that you've mentioned it I do recall that he always had a few vintage frames in his auctions. I guess I never made the connection. Some sellers are very obvious when they part out a bike. I guess it was his presentation of his vintage items that fooled me. By the way where does one find cheap, high quality bikes?

sykerocker 

Speak of the devil, he just popped up on my daily 'Helicomatic' automatic search. He's got a pair of Helicomatic rear/Normandy front/Matrix 27" rim touring wheels for sale (230199722533). $76.00 BIN, opening bid, untaken, of $9.99. First I've seen of him in months. No frames this time, just three wheel sets.

Rabid Koala

My experience with Banana Brain was unpleasant. Shipping was slow, that I could live with. Just be upfront about it is all I ask. I didn't get any response to numerous emails so I filed a complaint with ebay and then finally got a response. The items came much later.

I have bought a few items from Sultan. He is OK in my book!