I had been thinking about posting some images from bicycledecals.net, showing the various decal/logo styles used on Merciers from the 60's through the 80's, in hope of beginning to sort out the time frames (and model associations) of their use. When I actually visited the website and looked at the list of items they offer, I noticed that the various designs are only very roughly described in terms of what years they were in use. This was a bit discouraging, in that I would have expected their experience in working with Mercier owners might have helped them to narrow things down a bit more by now. On the other hand, as I suggested earlier, maybe there was more overlap going on during the 60's and 70's than I had realized. If different down tube logos were being used on the same models during the same years, this would pretty much ruin my hope of trying to sort everything out. I might also mention that I've saved dozens of bike images off the web, and in relatively few cases did the bike owners seem to be sure about what year their bikes dated to. So, it's been great to find so many images, and yet there's quite a puzzle there in terms of trying to sort out models and dates. Dates are far more difficult than models, though, as the 300's can be easy to spot, and there seem to be relatively few examples of the 100 out there (it's relatively uncommon to see a Mercier without chromed rear stays, for example).
I can easily post some bike images as we go along in discussing all of this, but I thought I'd start with the decal site. Below is a screenshot of the website's decal descriptions. Obviously, these sets are general in nature; don't necessarily correspond directly with every combination of decals found on vintage Merciers (the older ones all include the "Special TDF" decals, which of course were not found on all Mercier models of the period); and are not complete, in that not all of the original decal variations are included in their sets.
I guess my primary point is that there is no way to tell when (and how, depending on models) the "Mercier" down tube logo changes occurred. The uppermost logo, with the dot inside the "C" (and inside the "R's"), seems to have first appeared as early as the 1940's or 50's (?), and continued to be used into the early 70's. But did its use overlap with the use of the second logo? The all-block letter logo seems to have appeared circa 1976, as far as I can tell thus far, and continued until the early 80's script logo
Any thoughts on this?
