Are the older Eddy Merckx Bikes Always Good?

So I always thought Eddy Merckx frames were the cats pajamas, but then I found an Eddy bike on Ebay that went for about a ton the other day. I had assumed they were always worth at least two or three hundred for the frame alone.

Am I misinformed, or just missing out on bargains???

Cheers

Falcons made of gas pipe and scaffolding rebranded.

Plenty of 'Merckx' bikes were made under licence in both this country as well as others using inferior tubing and components - take a look in the porn thread for examples of the real deal - you'll soon get to know which is which!

Eddy's company started in 1980, so that's a good starting point.

Any earlier and you run the risk of buying junk.

Look out for the pantographed EM logo on the top of the stays at the seat post lug. Really early Eddy Merckx had a signature at the top of the stays. If you get one of those you're onto a winner.
Also Early Merckx frames had Eddy Merckx cast into the front dropouts, but you need to take the wheel off to see that of course.
If the frame is missing these and it's made of steel it's probably pants. Unless it's a Molteni Colnago. But you're looking at a lot of cash for that.

Early Merckx road bikes had flat crowns until about 1984 when they started to use sloping crowns. The flat ones had Eddy on one side and Merckx on the other. The later sloping crowns had the EM logo. They made a Reynolds 531 frame in the mid 80's which has much finer seat stays and sloping fork crowns, these are rare and good ones are expensive. Most of the early ones (pre 1984) that you come across are Colombus SL tubes and these have flat crowns.

Hope that helps.

There's a lot of cheap french Eddy Merckx equivalent of nordstar

where does the corsa 01 figure in the merckx lineup? any good?