I recently took in this stunning mid-90's Croll mtb and I just had to document it's condition as I decide what to do with it. Bikes like these are always a challenge as it's an absolutely perfect time capsule of the time it was built and is in essentially new condition. The owner literally only rode it eight times on pavement before hanging it up, this is evidenced in the brake track and cassette which show absolutely no signs of use. The frame itself is scratchless as is the painted to match fork, and therein lies the quandry for me. 

Now, I need to make my money back on this thing, and the original plan (before I knew it had a painted to match fork or had seen it in person) was to rob the hubs for my XO-1 as well as the Kooka brake levers for my stash, put a rigid fork on it and build it into a very useful townie and then sell off the post, saddle and bars. I figured I could maybe make a small profit and get free hubs and levers.

However what I'm now staring at is perhaps the best example in the world of a TIG welded Croll mountain bike and it has a painted to match Judy. The paint is the stunning Croll tiger stripes in red. Accomplished by using a silver base color, using a piece of cardboard held in the hand to mask and spraying black then a red candy top coat. It's incredible. 

I'd like to just keep it totally together, but Croll's just don't have much collector value outside of the Twin Cities. It'd be easy to do if it were a Yeti, but it's not. No one is likely to pay me decent money to display it as is. Not sure the direction we'll go in but in any case I'll make sure something rad happens to it and it finds a loving home. The frame and fork would make a killer display piece. 

Take a gander at this lovely period bike. I don't love the red on red accents, but I do find a time capsule to be a very interesting look into one persons version of a dream bike. It's got Lizard Skins everything including two headset boots and a chainstay protector with a shark fin strapped on top, not to mention a Ball Frog and a remote XTR shifter.