AU$16,000 Bianchi Bargain?

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NOS 1985 Bianchi Centenario
AU$16,000
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More pics
https://www.flickr.com/photos/di_fa...ZFseIQ0BORsd_lVIN-9c2LQioEKrLA5gZOdciZ5EG7_tE
 
I know some people that have some extremely high end vintage racing bikes in brand new condition but they never paid that much. How do you know it's never been ridden? :21:
 
Someone still could have thrown a leg over it and hardly pedaled it, still counts as ridden. I think whoever eventually buys this bike has too much money. I remember the $60,000 Colnago.
Someone definitely has done this in the last 35 years! If I paid that much for a bike, I'd want to be 100% sure not only had no one ridden it, but that they didn't even wheel it on the ground when they took it out to the alley for those pics.
 
The question is this: did the mechanic who put it together ride it? I personally rode any high end bike I put together to make certain it shifted well, test the brakes, all of those things. You can test those things in the stand, but someone who buys a high end bike EXPECTS it to operate PERFECTLY out of the box, even though the moment they change to race wheels, will be doing some adjustments. The bike would be cleaned and polished once again before it went on the floor.

Some shoppes would just put a bike together and adjust from the stand, but we prided ourselves on making certain that if you were getting a high end bike, it was going to operate perfectly out of the shoppe. Keep in mind we had a nice, clean parking lot in the back. It would literally be a five minute run through. I know now that many bikes now come fully assembled, minus seat, bars, stem and front wheels. At that point, I don’t remember too many high end bikes being fully assembled. We would usually face the head and bottom bracket shell, ream the seat tube and chase threads. Sometimes it even went on an alignment table. You didn’t do that to aluminium or carbon bikes. We did that on ANY steel framed bike over $1500 back then, which entailed tearing it down out of the box.

Through this tirade, I guess I am saying the likelihood of it being 100% unridden is not impossible, but that claim could be dubious. However- maybe Bianchi sold that bike fully assembled (some high-end bikes were even back then!) and they put the bars, seat and front wheel on and that’s it. There was a shoppe in NYC that had a near 30 year old Cinelli Laser that was so over-priced that it sat in a shoppe for years. If the shoppe is still there, that bike still likely is LOL

*Edit* It is possible that bike could be 100% unridden, as there likely was not much assembly to be done. I looked over the pix, and the assembly was likely done in Bianchi’s own shoppe. The Celeste blue paint in the component engravings gives it away. Factory drilled levers and handlebars, as well. Likely was a bike made to be shown and not ridden with the stitched, leather wrapped bars, bottle and pump. Pope John Paul 2 likely had one and he probably rode his.
 
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