randyjawa 

Sooner or later it is bound to happen, even to me. A few years ago, I almost bought this old bike for $125.00 CND thinking that I was getting a heck of a deal. A Cyclops for only a bit over a hundred bucks. Sadly, the bike was actually a repainted Apollo...





Well, if it seems to good to be true...

You know the rest of that. Anyway, has anyone else had a close call on buying a fake bike or, worse yet, has anyone been unlucky enough to get one. I should add that a good friend did get caught and ended up buying the bike, thinking that he was getting a real Cyclops. The bike even had the painted by Mulholland sticker on the top tube.

daf1009

Randy...interesting post...I have seen threads here about creating "fake" bikes...many people seem ok with it...I hate even the idea of it. The bike is what it is...not what the paint/stickers say it is...

If you are restoring a bike...restore it to what it IS, not what you WANT it to be...

rhm

I bought a Worksman Low Gravity cargo bike a dozen years ago, paid $100 which was about right for what I got.

It was repainted and badged as a Schwinn. A real Schwinn Cycletruck is worth more, and the seller insisted it was a Schwinn. Eh, whatever, I knew what it was and I'm not complaining. But it wasn't a Schwinn, that's for sure.

Wileyone 

Mike Mulholland (Cyclops) repainted bikes and often put his decals on them maybe because of difficulty in finding original decals.

bargainguy

I remember standing just outside a bike swap a few years ago, schmoozing with the swap promoters. Someone walks up with a blue road bike with Colnago decals, ostensibly to sell it at the swap.

I said "hold on a minute," gave the bike a quick once-over, and said to the owner, "Uh, did you know this is a Trek?" Seller gave me an incredulous look and said, "How did you know?" "Easy - Trek is pantographed into the top of the seat stays." No idea if the seller sold it as a Trek or a 'Nago, walked it back to his car in shame, or what happened to it. Gave the swap promoters a chuckle, though.

Jon T

Wow. And I thought the antique firearms fakers were bad.....................
Jon

SirMike1983 

We've generally been lucky in bicycles in terms of counterfeits so far. It can happen, but it's still rarer than in other sports. Golf, in particular, has had many counterfeit clubs being sold as genuine on the market.

leicanthrope

Oh, you should try WWII German militaria sometime. They were cranking out fakes before Berlin had fallen to the Russians.

gugie 

Fake is the new true, it would seem.

Wildwood 

... or something like this.
Yeah, I know it is a specialized application, but.....

swin1

Looks like you would have got a full 600EX group including wheels though. I wouldn't be complaining for that price.

Charles Wahl

I don't know what you're complaining about: fake or not, a complete bike with nice fork crown and decent components for $125 US or Canadian was a deal, I think. Has Cyclops ever made bikes with fender eyelets?

The Golden Boy 

I agree with this. Whenever the subject comes up, I try to be agreeable, even though it's against my opinion- just because I don't want to be "that guy."

It's not just for yourself, whether you intend to fake anyone out or not - when it leaves your possession (which it will), it becomes a counterfeit- it will fool someone. And even while you have it- it isn't what you present it as. You know it, why would you do that?

This has always been a thing in the guitar world, especially among Fender style guitars.

Short story long... I had a guitar that had a case that was stenciled with a "famous" band name. I found out that there was a bunch of local guys that made the stencil and did a bunch of their stuff with that band name... just for kicks. When I sold the guitar- with the case, I CLEARLY told the buyer what it was. I made every effort to make sure the buyer knew it was not former possession of that band. A few years later, there was a guy who bought the guitar as a "Used to belong to xxx band."

The Golden Boy 

While it may not matter to someone that just sees a bike as a bike- to people that are enthusiastic about bikes- the name and the decals matter. It's always been that way. The 531 or Columbus sticker was a symbol of prestige. Bikes that have prestigious pedigrees are prized.

When you have a no-name frame- regardless of how incredible it may be- it's just a nice mutt. It may be fantastic to ride, or even look at... but it gets a shrug.

lostarchitect 

???

I've never seen a thread on here where many people were OK with creating a fake bike.

T-Mar

Tourists and randonneurs weren't his normal clientele, but since Mulholland was a custom builder he would build whatever you wanted, within reason.

ramzilla

That's a pretty nice bike for $125. Who cares what name's on it. Ride that thing.

randyjawa 

Complaining? I did not want to come off as complaining. I was only pointing out that there are more fake bikes, these days, than in days gone bye, and the situation will worsen, with the passing of time. Perhaps the bike was worth the asking price, but that was not the point...

The point was/is that I am interested if anyone else has experienced the same kind of close call, nearly buying something that was not what it was purported to be. And...

Just maybe, I was offering a warning of things to come, our way, some day.

Wileyone 

Here's a hypothetical question.
If you had a Bike made by a high end builder that was sent to a second party Shop for retail. And when at the retailer the Bike was detailed with the Retailers own decals and Head Badge.
Now many years later with the Paint in disarray and the Decals gone and none available from the second Party Retailer would it be wrong to put the original builders Decals and Badge on, which are still available?

bikemig 

no, it's not in spite of what you may read on twitter,

bikemig 

Maybe I don't fish in expensive enough waters but fakes have been a non-issue in the bikes I've bought.

Kevindale

It appears to me that misrepresentation, both intentional and naive, is a much much bigger problem than outright fraud and intentional fakery. How many people sell bikes that are overbilled, with exaggerated claims? Most, it seems to me. Lots of vintage bikes, especially with missing decals and a few swapped parts, take expert forensic knowledge to accurately determine what they are. Some sellers seem overly optimistic, some willfully ignorant. How often do even original owners genuinely seem to mis-remember what they have? I can't look at CL without seeing tons of bikes that are obviously (to my unpracticed eyes) not what they're billed as, but they're not what we'd call fakes.

As for some of the 'fakes' that have been posted here, I only remember a couple, and I think both of them were powdercoated bikes that lacked the readily-discernible lug panto/cutouts that the authentic bike would have. They were more of what I would call homage bikes, and were only 'fake' enough to fool someone riding by, but not a buyer who knows anything about that brand of bike. Given the costs of a quality paint job and replacement decals, and the need for a frame that is clearly made from quality tubing with quality lugwork, creating a fake collectable road bike seems like a very expensive proposition.

Which leads me to the area of this hobby where I do worry about fakes - very high end (grail) bikes, often from specialized sellers. I find myself struggling to discern if they've been simply 'restored', vs. 'upgraded' during their restoration.

T-Mar

Years ago, I posted a similar question. Often manufacturers use the exact same frame to make multiple models by varying the component selection. Basically, you could take model A and change it to model B by installing the correct components. The consensus, at that time, was that such a practice would be fraudulent and that a bicycle must be represented only as the model it was when it left the factory. However, if the bicycle had been frankenbiked with downgraded components, it was still acceptable to represent it as model A.

SJX426 

I am sure there are many examples and I have one, 1973 (ish) Bottecchia. It was built as a Giro D'Italia but the frame set is the same for a Professional. Since the original decal is nearly gone, it would not take any effort or expense to build it as a Professional. I just used the drive train and brakes from my 72 Le Champion that was bent by a car. It already had a Campagnolo BB but not the head set. The latter is still installed and I can't think of a practical reason to change a fully functional HS. Plus it reminds me what it was originally.

As purchased:
[IMG]1972 Bottecchia Giro D'italia 60cm, on Flickr[/IMG]

Now
[IMG]P1030662, on Flickr[/IMG]

[IMG]P1030664, on Flickr[/IMG]

The Golden Boy 

I don't see a problem there. In the case of a bike that's exactly the same but with different components- the SN is the same, color is the same, just different components.

The early Trek bikes are like that. The actual difference in the frame was the tubing, and then the design and tubing. Bikes were serialed with a base model and it was solely the components that determined what specific model it was. A Trek 730 was a 531 framed racing bike. The serial number only reflected that base model. Whether it had Shimano or different levels of Campagnolo determined if it was going to be a 736, 737, or 738.

Once you're changing paint and altering the bike designation- that's where you're trying to change it into something that it's not.