Wow, thanks for your replies -- and, I guess I should've added a thanks for the past few years, since pretty much ALL travel I've managed to do is in one way or another indebted to FT.

AC has dates that work well BUF to FRA for 60k, so I've been looking to convert the SPG and Amex MR points to Aeroplan miles. Unfortunately, while the SPG conversion looks to be straightforward, when I closed my Amex Gold card (a year ago?), the Amex points apparently transformed into "Express" points, which seems to mean that conversions are now forbidden. Does anyone know if it is possible to revert those to standard (i.e. non-Express) MR points by opening a new Gold card and, if so, what the turn around would be for that? --or am I missing something obvious?