Bottechia Questions for those that know!

Hello!

I thought I'd come to you guys to ask a question. I moved to NYC in november and have been hankering after some gears for a few months. Bored the other day I thought I'd take a look at what was about on Craigslist and came across a listing for a Bottechia for $999 (634GBP) with Ultegra and 600 built up.

Anyhow - long story short I thought it was too good to be true (here's the original ad - the poster told me that he had installed gears now)

http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/bik/2843280644.html

Anyway - I met the guy tonight and the bike he brought was definitely (not just the fact it was now geared!) different to the one in the ad - this was for a couple of reasons - first off the steel was Columbus GARA (which actually appears to be CrMo?) rather than Tenax which it was advertised as, secondly the frame was a little worse for wear, thirdly the cables were run through exterior braze ons rather than internally and finally the chain stays were not chromed. Not having the photograph with me I thought I'd take a look at home and see what i could find out - but thought I'd ask this lovely forum too. The ad was definitely just copy and pasted from a different bicycle forum...

Basically - is this frame a heaving pile and a low end version of a beautiful frame designed for 'the masses'? Or is it worth the investment (based on the fact pretty much everything other than the frame would eventually be swapped out?)?

Here are the couple of photos I took of the frame (yes I am now a stereotypical american and only hangout at Dunkin Donuts). Serial # is 010564.

Although I am pretty sure that I'm not gonna go for it - I thought I'd ask you guys seeing as I've written all this already. Thanks! Answers on a post card!

Basically - if anyone has any info on Bottechia or this frame / style then please pipe up!

The more I look the more of a shit deal this seems! Anyway. Treat this as a thread to amuse yourself with. I feel sorry for the mug that ends up buying it now!

That's way over priced IMO! You can pick up columbus SL bottecchias for much cheaper than that.

what happened to the 2010 BMC race machine??

ahaha

Too many bastards on the Internet ha!

Not even the decency to use Gara in all tubes! Overpriced, over used and over there.