albrt 

A bike came in to the co-op recently - I thought it looked decent but then I noticed what appeared to be the remains of a Columbus sticker on the fork.






Prices online appear to be all over the place.

Normally we build bikes and sell them locally, but it seems to me that might actually reduce the value of this bike since we don't have fabulous gruppos to put on it. The components already on it are decent but not so great that we should strip them off to get the best value.

We generally do not sell bikes online because we are an anarchist co-op. We are not profit maximizers and nobody wants to take responsibility for shipping and relations with finicky online customers. If you are feeling a need to talk about online commerce being the best thing ever please feel free, but we will probably not do that. Advice about getting the best value locally would be very much appreciated. Phoenix is a pretty big market, but there is not an organized vintage bike presence. We might take it to the Tucson bike swap in the Fall - thoughts on whether to take it as a frame or a complete bike would be welcome.

zukahn1 

I would l say if yo don't have the stufff on hand to build it up set it aside for a bit to see if you can come up with the parts to build it up.. Then strip it and take the frame to the bike swap with just the headset really nice frame so you can likely get a couple hundred for it

zukahn1 

I can understand your trying to figure out what to do with this one as a donation. Having worked at a similar bike coop I know how while nice donations nicer road bikes in project condition a can be a bit of a problem often times end up being more hassle than there worth. Most of the time you don't have the resources to build them up right and there not really suitable to put in the free or cheap bike line up often times end up creating conflicts with members or patrons that want the nicer bike. Many time were I volunteered we ended up selling bikes like this at a low price or even giving away to senior volunteers just to get them out of the shop so we didn't have to deal with them.

Mr. 66

I would think in that environment about $150 as-is no returns.

albrt 

Thanks to everyone who answered.

Any other thoughts on this frame? If it's a $150 to $200 frame then I don't feel bad about getting it on the road with mixed components and selling it for $250 to $300. That's within the range of our normal sales. I just wanted to make sure I was not turning a $1000 frame into a $250 bike.

zukahn1 

It's a really nice frame just the brand has little or no recognition so it will only get about half what a similar level Italian frame would if it had well known top end label on it.

3alarmer 

.
...Casati made pretty high end frames, and when it was brand new, that one was probably pricey.
But they only did a marketing push in the USA for a brief period, so as stated above, not much name recognition.

Not sure how it ended up with those components. If only bikes could talk they would have some great stories.

The company is still in business, and they have a website with the history.

I repainted one once. They had some pretty interesting paint on some of their models in the '80's

3alarmer