Mercatone Uno Bianchi

[jason1788]

Hi All, are there any experts on these much-copied bikes? I've been offered a supposed original team bike (yes, I know) and am looking for an expert willing to have a pm discussion. Thanks!

 

[Canuk]

Team bikes are few and far between. There are a lot of replicas (you'll know them by the painted yellow forks, rather than carbon). They're are probably thousands out there. Nice bikes but not team bikes.

A team bike (any of the genuine ones I've seen) will have the riders initials stamped under the bracket. Bianchi are quite good at this. If anyone offers you a 'Marco Pantani' race ridden bike it's almost 100% bollocks. He didn't have a great preference for frames, only trick parts, so the frames that are his are few and almost entirely in museums or private collections.

The following are A. a modern re-release and B. A good example of a replica pretending to be a 'team' bike. A genuine Pantani ridden bike recently sold for $11,000. But came with a ton of provenance.

 

[ChromeChainstay]

post some pics for us, if you have access

 

[jason1788]

Well I didn't mention Pantani, the bike in question is supposedly from Mario Traversoni. I've known this bike since about 2001 and my opinion is that nobody would fake a bike from a little-known and not-especially-successful (sorry Mario!) sprinter, only a couple of years after the team's glory days.

 

[Walterscot]

That’s a PMP titanium seat collar as favoured by Marco Pantani (he also used a PMP titanium seatpost). A decent chance that PMP could’ve supplied the team with collars and everyone else would just use the stock Campag seatpost.

 

[Canuk]

Well I didn't mention Pantani, the bike in question is supposedly from Mario Traversoni. I've known this bike since about 2001 and my opinion is that nobody would fake a bike from a little-known and not-especially-successful (sorry Mario!) sprinter, only a couple of years after the team's glory days.

If it's cheap enough, buy it. The name probably doesn't add much value to it. Without any tangible provenance it's worth about as much as a replica I'd say.