Living and working in the UK, I have never dealt with Mel Pinto, and, before seeing these pages, I had never even had the pleasure of reading a Mel Pinto catalogue. But everything here is very familiar to me - from the lack of any apparent organisational structure to the monochrome images and line drawings that have been literally cut (with scissors) from the manufacturers’ original catalogues and pasted (with glue) into these pages. Even the idea of outlining the burnt out highlights in the photographs with a felt-tip pen seemed to occur to British wholesalers of the same period. And despite its childlike, amateurish, qualities this was exactly the kind of catalogue that real dealers found most useful when trying to help real customers. The catalogue appears to have been in ‘loose-leaf ring-binder’ format - and these pages may date from a range of different years between 1970 and 1975.

From a modern perspective, you can’t help marvelling that Campagnolo, Huret, MAVIC, Shimano, Simplex, Stronglight, Sugino, SunTour and Super Champion make up a fair fistful of brands for one wholesaler to represent!

• Publisher: Mel Pinto
• Country: USA
• Date: 1970 to 1975
• Derailleur brands: Campagnolo, Huret, MAVIC, Shimano, Simplex, Stronglight, Sugino, SunTour
• Derailleurs: too numerous to mention - see individual pages