Tuesday, 16 August 2011

New Vespa item sold as old


The enamel sign above is sold at an Swedish auction site. It's described as an original 50's sign, "bought in a Piaggio Vespa Antique Shop in Florens", Florens being the Swedish name of Firenze. I didn't know it was a shop in that town selling only antique (sic) Vespa stuff. The sign is according to the seller NOS, new old stock, even if uses another frase; "it has never been mounted".
Well, to me the Vespa logo is from th 2000's. The colour is also wrong for being a 50's sign, and it should also read Piaggio. 
Compare the logo with the red one below. It's from an original manual to a Vespa 125 U.  The letters are quite different from the one's of the sign above.

 Here ist the modern version of the Vespa logo, taken from an official Vespa site:



Last picture, from a 1953 Vespa 125 sitting al fresco at my backyard:


So, the sign at the auction site has a highest bidder of approximately 70 euro, not meeting the reserve. Not a lot if you want a sign with a Vespa logo.
What's bothering me is the false saying that the sign is a geuine 50's Vespa sign. That stinks!

2 comments:

  1. Seller made a comment that the sign might not be as old as first told. It didn't meet the reserve.

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  2. Hi!

    I was the seller and as you said, it probably were newer than I thought :) Sold it though, but I regret it now since I'm buying my first Vespa next summer :) Thanks for a nice blog!

    Regards Adam from Sweden

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