After spending a good part of the holiday shovelling horse manure for my injured cousin I ventured over to check out a couple of my better producing thrift shacks on the way home. When walking in a gentleman in his late 20's or early 30's rode up to the entrance on a chrome road bike with ghettoized upturned drop bars, parked it next to the door and walked inside after me. A minute later I walked back out to see what it was. "Schwinn Paramount" the headbadge screamed.

Tripping over myself entering the store again while debating on letting the unlocked bike out of my sight or not, I walked up to the guy and asked if that was his silver bike. He said yes and then I asked if it was for sale. "What's your offer?" he said. "I dunno--let me look at it again," was my reply.

Back outside we go to look it over. A quick inspection revealed Cinelli Mod.Giro d'Italia bars with a Cinelli stem, Campagnolo Barcons with blue covers on them, Campy brake levers and front caliper (no rear brake caliper at all), Campy crankset and pedals, Nuovo Record derailleur set, and three Campy brake cable holder clips on the top tube. Seat tube had a small dent on the front side, and the chrome finish looked pretty good but rather weathered. No decals or stickers on it at all. Overall in filthy condition with mostly surface rust scattered about, mainly on the forks and below the seat. I'm not sure what the seatpost is as it is still covered in grime.

Not wanting to insult him I offered $80 (which I thought was reasonable for a working bike) and he accepted, later telling me that a couple previous offers of $25 or $30 were declined.

The bolted on wheels with splitting, cracking tires aren't original but I think I made out ok.

First time I found Campy stuff on a bike in the wild. The Chrome Paramount is a nice bonus!

Whoah, you did well I'd say. Everybody wants a paramount, and yours is silver!

That is a VERY nice score. Congratulations!

I can't find a date code on the headbadge. Serial number on the rear dropout is H72118. What year would this bike be from?

Oh yeah, there was nothing but kids bikes in the store.

Did you pay to much!? many of the pieces like the rear derailleur or the cranks may be worth that alone... that was a steal, clean it and bring it back up to snuff and you'll have a bike many people pay over $1000 for frequently.

I'll buy it off you for $120.

No deal. I gotta at least double my cost.

$160 seriously?

Sorry, I forgot to add a grinning smiley there. It's not even clean yet, and I know it is probably worth a bunch.

August, 1972. It was the 118th Paramount frame built that month.

Here's what it will look like when it's all gussied up. This one is M72274 (274th frame, December, 1972).

Yeah, well I already have my silver cashcow (a powermac G4 that I got at a garage sale for $150, goes for about $600)

Wow, BlankCrows, you are probably still shaking from that!

Nice catch, and no wonder you've been so busy this weekend!

East Hill

Yeah - besides, I'm getting my hands on it tomorrow.......

That sure is a steal. lol
I'd feel guilty giving such a low offer to a guy knowing full well what something is/most likely is worth. I mean, you played the dude from beginning to end.
I'd probably offer to ebay it for him for a hefty fee saying it COULD bring in some money as all bikes seem to sell
especially chrome ones ..that way both make out reasonable well
That's atleast somewhat fair. You dont end up with a dope bike
but you may get half of the way there if you split the selling price
and you get the extra bonus of possibly helping out a guy without much money
Not bad for doing nothing


That said
I have nothing against someone paying $80 for a Paramount if that's what the seller is asking.
I just bought a camera and near new lenses couple days ago for my birthday off craigslist
One very rare lens is worth about $700-850
other is worth $250
Camera body is worth $250-400 ..none seen on ebay
Film $40
13 Film holders worth $100
Polaroid film holder $50
Case for camera $50-80
Lensboards for lenses $50

He asked $500 for everything just so he could sell it quickly enabling him to go digital the way he wanted. He knew market value.
I bought my chrome frejus for $150. He knew it was worth a bit more than that, though.

Anyway
just my thoughts
This dude may not be too bright
I know if someone came up asking if they could buy something off me after getting nothing more than a glance at it
I'm going to take his number and research that thing.


Cool bike.

Yeah, and if you sell it for $250 to put a down payment on that Masi you saw the other day, just remember that I know where you live!


It's not my fault the guy didn't know what he had. After my offer he could've countered if he wished. Considering it's condition and the seller's personal circumstances (he told me some interesting things when we were chatting), I at least saved the bike from a possible garbage dumpster future.

Thanks for the date Scooper! Wow, that's a pretty one. Was that one at the SF Veloswap? This beast will take some work to get the frame and fork cleaned up nice.



I'll be shaking for a while I'm sure.

Hmmm, these bars are pretty comfy. Much easier to ride the drops when they are above the stem!

That's all cool. I was going to mention that you COULD have saved it from a life of hell given he didn't know anything about the bikes value
but then it's just a bicycle
and it was going too far to suspect that the guy didn't take care of his things just because he doesn't keep it in the -best- of condition, doesn't know it's worth etc
so I left it out

He wasn't informed/educated about the bike and didn't care to become
That is his fault.
It's still -IN MY OPINION- a bad thing you did.
If you're not selling the bike
Not as big of a deal. But you did clearly play the dude so that he would remain "stupid" about the bike
I mean
perhaps if you had said CHROME
it may have rung a bell
Or made you sound too smart ..and therefore not likely to care about ordinary junk
or had you drooled over the "Campy"
Same thing

Great find! Good for you! Here's an idea about your brakes. There's a guy on Schwinn Forum who has a '66 P-14 he's riding as a fixie. He wants to add a front brake. Maybe you could split the cost of a set of record brake calipers? I'll give him the link to this post. Can't wait to see your Paramount restored!

I won't be selling the bike anytime soon. Bigbossman is going to look it over, hopefully give me some pointers on cleaning and sources for its rehabilitation, and then probably advise me how much it could help him get that nice Masi. He did mention that if I left it with him for a while he may move to an undisclosed location forthwith........

If the gentleman knew the difference between silver and chrome I would've gotten a counter offer I'm sure, and he did note that it was nicely made because of the italian components. I don't believe I had any obligation to advise the gentleman about the bike at all. If he wanted to research it he would've done so previously. You're correct in noting that the gentleman didn't take care of it--it's pretty ratty looking. Hopefully it will clean up well, but if it doesn't it is what it is.

For the record, I don't ask thrift stores, garage sale or flea market sellers to change their original prices and charge me ebay or CL market value for items priced lower either.

I'm sure we could all talk at length about the semantics of how I obtained the bike. But perhaps that would be best done after someone explains what the opposite of caveat emptor is.

Thanks Bob, I appreciate that. These are Record brakes? I don't know Campy stuff at all, or their prices. I'm afraid to find out how much a wheelset would cost.

I have conscience issues when I come up against something where the seller doesn't know the value, as well. If they give me a price, I'm fine with that. If they ask for an offer, it's hard. I ended up paying not much below market for a set of Campy 63 Gran Sport hubs, when I could have had them for $20. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. It was made worse by the fact that the seller was an old guy, selling them on behalf of an old lady.

I don't think you did a bad thing though - he was out to offload it, and did better for it because of you, perhaps. It's his responsibility to find out the value before he sells.

We could back up all the way, and say, well, how much did the gentleman at the thrift shop pay? He was obviously not the original owner, or he would know how much he paid and what it was worth. How do we know that this wasn't a scam, with someone putting a Paramount headbadge on a chrome bike (remember, no decals on this bike) and hoping that someone would make an offer? True, it had nice components, and it appeared to be nicely made, but that doesn't mean it's a Paramount. There's someone on the SF CL right now acting naive about chrome Paramounts.

Whatever BlankCrows paid, it was more than the gentleman at the thrift shop paid. And BlankCrows paid a better price than the two other persons who offered a lower price. It wasn't until BlankCrows got it home that he could really determine that it was a real Paramount.

All in all, we aren't talking about a perfect Paramount here. It's going to take quite a bit of work. I know that bigbossman is probably quite excited about working on this bike, and he's offering to assist BlankCrows. So it's going to cost some time, some effort, and some love.

And, it couldn't have gone to a nicer person. BlankCrows, out of his own generosity, went looking, and found me a red mixte. Bigbossman examined it, and determined that it was not in good enough shape to send to me. So karma came around, BlankCrows found a Paramount, bigbossman gets to look and play with a real chrome Paramount, and Pastor Bob says it's all good.

Edit: And besides, this is BlankCrows. How could he resist a bike with shiny chrome? It would be against crow nature .

East Hill

I agree. The offer was more than previous offers and must have seen like a good deal to the seller. $30 for the bike was too low, $80 was ok. We sometimes forget the amount of time and effort it takes to make a bike really nice. Given that the bike wasn't even being locked up outside of a store, it is more likely that it would have ended up stolen and the owner would have had nothing.

I doubt he thought the bike was made of silver ..probably decided he just wasn't in the mood to correct you
He obviously -most likely- just didn't know what chrome does for an older bikes value ..especially a Paramount

The stupid get what they deserve. This may be true
I'm just not so sure we have the right to call people stupid when we have the opportunity to educate them and decide not to because it isn't in our best interest to do so.
I'm just saying you took advantage of the guy
Not that you didn't know that or forgot ..that was the plan.
It worked and you scored yourself a dope bike
I just can't congratulate you

I'm in here -for the most part- because of this one line
"Not wanting to insult him I offered $80"
You were insulting him from beginning to end imo

Next time I see a poor single mom struggling to feed her children
I may just offer to buy her decrepit home for what seems like a great amount of money to her
the money will buy food and get her into a nicer place

I'll tear down that shack knowing I can sell the land to a developer for 10x what I paid for it
Am I good guy for helping her out as much as I did

You score a nice bike
You score an expensive property
I'm not sure either is worth what you've lost

Well it seems to me that the offers of $25 or $30 were insults that he passed on. $80 was okay for an old bike.

What I think is interesting is if the guy were driving a Lexus and took his ratty silver bike off a carrier rake and made a comment about not having the one brake and I offered him $80 to take it off his hands and he accepted, would there be the same level of discussion?

If I buy a bike for $20 and put some time in and it sells for $120 did I take advantage of the seller? Is there some magic ratio, if I triple my money I am an okay guy, but if I make 8x the money, I'm not?

The bike already was missing one brake and was not in top shape. If the bike had ended up at the dump, would we have an obligation to go -- whoa! someone threw out a Paramount -- I should track them down and tell them what mistake they made ---- No we say, 'I can't believe the stuff people throw out'.