Took a punt on this bike earlier this year...
As you can see from the pic it's a Roberts with full XTR M900, it looked pretty shabby though and had a small dink on the top tube. However I'd been looking for a Black Leopard for a while, thought I had on at one point only to be disappointed, so I thought I'd roll the dice. It turned out that the bike had been bought for the wife of a billionaire who preferred horses. The dink occurred when the bike fell from the garage wall and was thankfully very small.
As is often the case with a Roberts bike it can be hard to be absolutely certain what model it is, especially as they offered so many options for customization, and many bikes were out and out custom builds with no direct connection to any of the catalogue models, however this one matched exactly the 1992 catalogue listing for the Black Leopard, from the three bottle braze-ons, the extra wide clearances and the colour. Added to that was the owners testimony that the bike was sold to him as being somewhere between a mountain bike and a tourer. So as far as I'm concerned, and until someone proves otherwise, it is a Black Leopard.
After stripping it down and giving everything a deep clean I was stunned by the condition of the the group set, it was clearly used but it was obvious that it had never really been properly ridden. Now, the week I cleaned it up another far less pristine M900 group that didn't have all the little extras like BB and minty brake blocks etc sold for £800. I made the rookie error of excitedly telling my missus what it might be worth, and suffice it to say, and very much against my own personal wishes, it was listed on ebay.
I ended up selling it to a fellow RBer for a price that I think we were both happy with, it meant that I'd got back not far off three times what I'd paid for the bike and I still had what I really wanted - the frameset. As agreed by the missus 30% of the proceeds went towards real life stuff (like new shoes and a handbag) and the rest could be spent on bikes, or to be more specific on this bike.
It's currently on its way back to me from Mercian, the dink has been repaired, they assured me that it was a minor cosmetic issue and there was no danger of any structural damage, and it's received a shiny new paintjob - I'll share pics once it arrives.
As you can see from the pic it's a Roberts with full XTR M900, it looked pretty shabby though and had a small dink on the top tube. However I'd been looking for a Black Leopard for a while, thought I had on at one point only to be disappointed, so I thought I'd roll the dice. It turned out that the bike had been bought for the wife of a billionaire who preferred horses. The dink occurred when the bike fell from the garage wall and was thankfully very small.
As is often the case with a Roberts bike it can be hard to be absolutely certain what model it is, especially as they offered so many options for customization, and many bikes were out and out custom builds with no direct connection to any of the catalogue models, however this one matched exactly the 1992 catalogue listing for the Black Leopard, from the three bottle braze-ons, the extra wide clearances and the colour. Added to that was the owners testimony that the bike was sold to him as being somewhere between a mountain bike and a tourer. So as far as I'm concerned, and until someone proves otherwise, it is a Black Leopard.
After stripping it down and giving everything a deep clean I was stunned by the condition of the the group set, it was clearly used but it was obvious that it had never really been properly ridden. Now, the week I cleaned it up another far less pristine M900 group that didn't have all the little extras like BB and minty brake blocks etc sold for £800. I made the rookie error of excitedly telling my missus what it might be worth, and suffice it to say, and very much against my own personal wishes, it was listed on ebay.
I ended up selling it to a fellow RBer for a price that I think we were both happy with, it meant that I'd got back not far off three times what I'd paid for the bike and I still had what I really wanted - the frameset. As agreed by the missus 30% of the proceeds went towards real life stuff (like new shoes and a handbag) and the rest could be spent on bikes, or to be more specific on this bike.
It's currently on its way back to me from Mercian, the dink has been repaired, they assured me that it was a minor cosmetic issue and there was no danger of any structural damage, and it's received a shiny new paintjob - I'll share pics once it arrives.
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