I've been wondering when does old junk become rare antiques.
I was rooting around in a box of shoes in my garage. I’m not exactly Imelda Marcos, but over the years I’ve acquired an impressive array of shoes. Not the sort of shoes that would appeal to Carrie Bradshaw of ‘Sex in the City’ but shoes bought on sale from Nashbar many years ago, most of which never fit in the first place. And then there are all the real good deals I got at Big Events past, which almost fit and the price was right. I’ve got various generations of shoe covers that I stopped wearing when I decided they were just to much trouble to take on and off and having cold feet wasn’t all that bad.
Anyway, in the aforementioned box I came across two pairs of Detto Pietro cycling shoes. The old real leather kind with shoelaces. That had the slotted cleats on the bottom that were meant to fit into regular pedals with toe clips. I suspect many of you haven’t a clue what I’m talking about but these hearken back to the days before clipless pedals were invented (see, you had to have clips before you could be clipless), slightly after the invention of the wheel, I believe. Anyway, even I, retrogrouch that I am, have gone over to the dark side, the clipless camp, and the possibility of my ever wearing these was remote. Now, I am not one to consider discarding any item that might be considered remotely useful (as Mrs. D. will attest) but these seemed beyond the pale even for me. But then it occurred to me that at some point old useless stuff like this becomes collectibles. I had just ridden by a house where among the stuff in the trash was one of those old mechanical calculators, you know the kind where you push huge buttons, ratchety, ratchety happens, and then the answer comes out. Anyway, this was so ancient and after seeing in the Sunday Globe magazine section what sort of stuff is swapped, I figured this was a good candidate. So the shoes seemed a natural. I figured it was time for an eBay search. I found one pair going for $40. These were a pretty snazzy looking two tone job, red and gray (much like my aunt’s old ‘55 Chevy). My two pair were black and pretty dusty from sitting in a box for about a decade, but I figured they could be cleaned up. Anyway, the seller was in Brisbane Australia and had an unspecified shipping cost, so I thought I might have a good shot at the local market that were not particularly style conscious. Besides my experience with cycling shoes is that if they don’t start out black, they end up that way anyway. Then I noticed the shoes in question had velcro straps, which meant that they were way newer than my shoes, which were from long before velcro was invented. So, this didn’t really answer the question, since these were clearly not collectibles, but modern new fangled merchandise.
So I kept looking an came across a picture of shoes for $60 that looked a lot like mine. Only they weren’t all dusty and scuffed up. They were literally new. Sold by a store named New-Old-Stock “NOS” Bicycle Shop. So My only consolation was that though they looked the same, my shoes were actually way older than those. They might have been worn by Fausto Coppi. Probably couldn’t get away with advertising that, since I had no idea who they were worn by (one pair probably not even by me, since they were a Big Event find). So it looks like I’m still in that grey area of pretty old but not ancient (some people say that about me). Guess I better hang onto them for another ten years.
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