“K&Sword”
WE GIVE THE NUMBERS
My son says that collectors are not ordinary people.
My son says that collectors are crazy paranoid, fixed in the grip of obsessive-compulsive disorders.
My son says that collectors are potentially dangerous.
My son says.
So we collectors give the numbers .
In fact, looking critically at the vast audience of that kind I have to agree that the examples meeting the listed features are not lacking.
This cross world that cuts the logical distorting Society, hierarchies and intelligence, perhaps one day we will do a more extensive and in-depth discussion and to set forth the characters, the types and the most intimate mechanisms and recurring.
For now let’s just give the numbers.
Goodmorning everyone,
I have 19 locos 424 and even two alike.
Yeah sure, then I have no less than 60 transformers and once I attacked them all to a single socket with a tangle of multiple and triple in multiple: I wanted to see if the inductance of the primary could trigger the life-saving, but nothing , sol a great buzz, a gentle hum, the mysterious sound of the AC revealed by hundreds of vibrating nucleis foils embraced and captivated by thousands of turns.
Meanwhile, my son, observing, was silent.
But between the wires of the transformers I am losing the thread: these are not the numbers I wanted to talk.
The numbers I wish to discuss are the serial numbers.
And since I can stay fully in the above categories, I can afford impunity a bold statement: the serial numbers, I invented them myself.
Yes, me.
Louis XIV ( “Le Roi Soleil”) would have said “The number, c’est moi!”.
Or rather, it goes well, let’s say I discovered them myself. Since they already existed in nature, I have them just “discovered.”
“Cala Trinchetto!” Would have even told my grandmother.
Sure, sure, they had already seen them all, and someone already lit, even before I had guessed (moderately) what they were and what importance they had. Someone already had the idea of bringing together the small number printed on a label or stamped on the underbody to the same number handwritten on the guarantee certificates … However that number had not before a great importance, no one was looking, no one paid any attention and oceanic masses of Sunday collectors needless ever was aware of their existence.
Then came the one who all asked
“what number is it? “.
That is me.
“What number do?” They asked astonished interlocutors even orbi from time verb.
By degrees the most astute traders realized the only thing that interested them: the lowest was the number, thew highest was the price they could request.
The number had been discovered.
Since then to the present day the number is always in the foreground in speeches, on the internet, on sales of Ebay etc.
We talk about it and we say, but as always, we understand little.
Let us therefore make a minimum order.
First of all “low” it does not necessarily mean “worth more” or even “rare” sometimes yes, sometimes no, certainly only mean “older”.
Value and rarity depend on model and variant.
As observed so far it can be concluded with certainty (or at least until proven otherwise certain) that the serial numbers assigned to locos CONTI CO.MO.G.E. were progressive in the context of the whole production independently of the loco model. This gives us the ability to quantify with good accuracy the total quantity of produced locos and also approximate proportion to the number of wagons and carriages produced. Higher numbers found so far are of the order of 53,000 and temporally can be placed in the mid 60s or slightly beyond. Since production began in 1945/46, we can then estimate a cycle of about two decades for 50,000 locos, or an average of 2,500 units per year. In short, very little stuff when compared to other productions. and in fact we see the industry markets: 1000 LIMA, 100 Marklin, 1 CONTI (prices rather the contrary).
But the questions to be asked and to which is much more difficult to answer accurately are others.
Knowing the number is possible to deduce the production year?
The certificates are rarely present (especially for older pieces) and almost never have a complete date. The rare cases of successful presence of both factors (certificate number and date) help us to reconstruct the evolution of production by placing fixed points. Already because the production does not have certainly had a constant trend. We know that in the mid 50s there was a peak of production, the rest probably, from 1946 to 1956, there was about a fairly linear increase and from 1957 on, the line must have stopped growing up to a modest decline in the mid 60s. In fact, although uncertain, the stop of production does not seem to have been linked to a crisis of the train in the specific sales, but to the company crisis in general, of which the train was just a part.
About certificate date, there is also saying that often when do exist, these are not related to production but to the sale. Therefore it could also be spent months and even years from production to the sales.
A number that particularly passionate my friend is the No. 5.
He has long sought to convince himself that his train had the serial number, thus representing no less than the fifth item produced by Parretti cousins!
After strong effort, I think, I finally have him disillusioned.
With envy that he possessed the CONTI exemplary older Galaxy and especially older than the oldest of my Conti, I managed to organize a series of such solid and convincing arguments as to be credible not only to his eyes, but even finally I believed it!
Because that is how it is. This is a field where in the absence of Teutonic certainties as arid as those that provide us with the Marklin productions (so comfortable for the most insecure collectors who are always in need of external comfort), you must resort to the competition of documentary and logical to rework results corroborate the hypothesis, but remaining hypotheses.
In short, not pure rationality and not blind faith, but as Christianity, faith supported by the reason.
I do not bore on the wide range of brilliant arguments, but ultimately, I repeat, objective and techniques and that all could share: that No. 5 is not just the serial number.
But among all the arguments, one yes, I would rather submit to examination.
And the most fascinating and daring that will never be shown to the end, but it will remain valid until proven otherwise and that, in fact, is only a hypothesis, but supported by reason, by the help of documentary evidence.
I hereby affirm and support and show
that the first model produced was not the No. 1.
And I adduce even never have existed No. 5.
How can I say this?
In the last 15 years we have seen hundreds or thousands of CONTI locos and their serial numbers.
I have never seen one below 500.
The lowest I have seen is the 505.
Of course, only 500 pieces, five hundred … may be a case. But also between 500 and 1000 are 5 hundreds, but we have seen many examples between 500 and 1000.
We also know with certainty that the number at the end of 1947 came to about 1,700.
We also know with certainty that the planning design CO.MO.G.E. began at the end of 1945, not before as there was the war, then the production during 1946, but perhaps even toward the end of the year.
We also know that the number 505 was not produced in Bollate as CONTI, but at Via Merano as CO.MO.G.E. so before CONTI, report that perhaps started right in 1947 or 1946 max end.
It was therefore produced 500 pieces as CO.MO.G.E. pre-CONTI in a few months from a fledgling company that was working in a traditional way under an arch of the railway bridge?
But why not? … Some might say.
Because it takes money to produce (and the Marshall Plan was still in gestation)
and the Parretti were only railway workers, with flair and entrepreneurial will, but I do not think they had available large base resources to those hard times.
So they had to even sell them while they were building .
And as many as 500 pieces are so many for sale in a few months in 1946 when people still starved for war, especially if you have not already entrenched in the commercial sector level, especially if the brand is unknown (and in fact then have sought CONTI to be conveyed in the sector).
CONTI yes, it was an established industry with a credibility that gave access to both the market and to credit.
As CONTI could also manufacture 1,000 pieces and distribute them, but I can not believe how CO.MO.G.E. it has been possible to manufacture 500 pieces in a few months. That are not only 500 locos, but also 500 of the rest: transformers, poles rails boxes etc .. Of course, maybe the rest is commissioned, but still had 500 to do.
The numbering is not started from 1.
Among other things, the hoped-for number 5 of my friend is already producing CONTI, as clearly specified by CO.MO.G.E. coloured stamps which they were affixed precisely to distinguish the fact.
In terms even more hypothetical reasoning I try to make a commercial for a company in its infancy: it should present itself to the public with a certificate object as the fifth or the tenth or hundredth product? There is a risk that the distrust of the buyer too new and not yet experienced?
Another little hint …: my 505 (ah already it is) was not find on Ebay, but I know exactly where it comes from. It comes from the archive of a trader of each new production used to set aside a copy just came out …
And in any case, I repeat the first point: where are those 500 pieces?
Because we have not seen not even one?
So gentlemen! Get active and give the numbers!
We form a very CONTI NUMERAL REGISTER !
Refuted my argument with evidence and rewrite the History.
… Hey! You back there, yes, I saw you. Let down those punches. So I distinguish them.
P.S.
..which are started from 500? But …, then it is certain: the number 5, I have it !!
Giacomo P. ,
mule driver
btg “Dronero”, 2°rgt, 4a div. Alpina “Cuneense”.
(@19 Marzo 2016)
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