[CR]The Big Score

I've now been in Belgium for almost 8 months and found the pickings of classic bike stuff pretty slim. Most of the cool old stuff is still around if you look but the prices seem to have doubled. I'm always on the look out for jerseys, but they became hip with the kids a few years back, so it seems the days of cool old wool jerseys for $10-$15 are over. Beyond jerseys I wasn't looking for much else except publications, mainly because I just can't afford anything else. I've also been hunting for things here for other folks, but even the publications seem to have dried up a bit. I've found a ton of books on Eddy Merckx but this is Belgium after all. I haven't picked up any of these books because they're mostly text and I'm not quite at the "Harry Potter" reading level yet in Dutch.

A few months ago Mitzi and I visited the comic museum in Brussels and there in the Marc Sleen http://www.lambiek.net/sleen.htm section were a couple of these comics he used to do for the paper Het Volk where he would make a comic for each day of the Tour van Frankrijk (Tour de France). I don't know how long he made them but he seems to have started in the late-40s, I think. After seeing just two of these comics M and I knew we had found our holy grail of memorabilia from our year abroad. Today I put my hands on that grail and brought it home. . . and then some. As I said before I had been looking for publications to take home with me. The biggest problem was when ever I found something good it was too expensive, $10-$15 for one page on 6-day racing in the 30s. Or it is in poor shape like the newspaper special sections I've found for post-WWII Tours that were turning to dust in front of me. Well today I found exactly what I was looking for.

Every weekend we got to the market in town, which we call the crapmarkt since it's mainly stuff recovered from a dumpster and dropped on the sidewalk unceremoniously. There are occasionally gems in the junk, like the brand new pebble-top Brooks B5N for $7. I passed on it because neither M or I can ride such an ass-hatchet, but these thing do appear. This morning M pointed over to a pile of news print and said there was some bike stuff. I went over an looked and it seemed. . . OK, it was mainly a bunch of sport magazine covers cut of for the picture. Mitzi had seen the top one which was a nice pic of Gino Bartali. There were a couple of other things I wasn't really interested in either but I continued to dig. I found at the bottom a binder with the handwritten words "Tour de France 1950" on it. It was a thick binder that someone had made into a scrapbook of the 1950 tour with all the newspaper cut outs from that year, in Dutch of course. With these cuttings were also a few of the Marc Sleen comics. There was also a bunch of other loose cuttings that I didn't look at too close.

At this point I knew I needed to have it and Mitzi had elbowed and told me to get it. Mitzi's in way more into bike racing than I am and her Dutch is quite good so I know she might be really annoyed if I passed on this deal. I picked up the whole package and asked the guy how much for the whole thing. He said "You want the whole thing?" I replied "Yep." He thought about it for a bit, he had obviously been thinking people would buy little individual things for a euro a piece. He quoted me a price which was a good deal and said "and don't even think I'll take less." So I handed over my cash, which was still a whole days living budget even though it was a good deal. We didn't realize how good a deal until we got it home and took everything apart. In the loose sheets was stuff dating back to the late-20s. There was also a complete set of the Marc Sleen from 1952 and another set of comics called "Mosterd en Pickles." There was also 8 pages of broadsheet of something about scandals since the start of the tour from 1955. Also 44 pages called "Het Helden-Epos" which is a comic about the story of the tour from Henri Desgrange to Eddy Merckx published in the early-70s. Plus there was a bunch of other random cuttings including a 1928 broadsheet on Le Tour's route that year. If you would like to see some of this stuff I made a little page at:\ http://homepage.mac.com/monkeylad/PhotoAlbum22.html The pictures aren't very good, but it'll give you an idea of the collection.

What isn't pictured is the scrapbook which seems to have everything from the 1950 Tour including the whole Marc Sleen comic set and "Mosterd en Pickles" which also included commentary with the comic. I haven't really gotten too far beyond sorting everything to see what goes with what, but each time I look I'm surprised. Last year about this time I wrote a post to the list about how everything is still out there if you're willing to be patient and look around a bit. I didn't luck out so much as be diligent and patient and I found what I wanted. If I get nothing else to remember my year in Belgium I'll still be happy.

If you'd like to comment about this stuff on the list please remember to CC me since I've disabled delivery of the list at this time. enjoy, Brandon"monkeyman"Ives currently Gent, Belgium ++++++++++++++++++ "Sine coffea nihil sum." --Sarah Vowell-- ++++++++++++++++++

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