---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Norris Lockley <nlockley73@googlemail.com> Date: Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 12:28 PM Subject: Rene Herse Lady's bike on French Ebay To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Herse bikes are very much like buses these days....just when you have missed one, along comes another.!
Just entered on French Ebay woth 8.75 days still to run is an old, by the look of it, Rene Herse complete lady's bike. To be collected from the Rhone - Alps ie somewhere between Lyon and the Cote d'Azur <d@azur>, including the Grenoble area ( I think), the current bid stands at 505 euros with three bids on it. It looks as though it is going to run on a bit...
The bike is equipped with a Herse single chainset, Simplex Champion du Monde rear mech, Maxi hubs on worn-out Super Champion rims and punctured tyres, Lefol Martele guards lacking the rear light, and an Ideale Mod 64 saddle, with something called a Salmon-nose peak that has been baked fairly dry by the Provencal sun. Bars and stem are Philippe flat ones..and the brakes are probably Herse cantilever ones, but the seller does not confirm this.
Now that was the good news. As for the frame it is bronze-wlelded and therefore lugless. The design is the standard lady design of a single sloping top-tube with an extra pair of stays brazed on fron the drop-outs to a point three or four inches in front of the D/T - S/T joint...not a very pretty junction really. The frame is quite small, possibly about a 48cms/19 inch and is finished in chrom-plate. The best part of the frame/fork combination is the pair of nicely raked fork blades; the crown does not look too impressive..not a twin-plate.
The seller states that the chrome-plating is "abime" worn out in places..but then states that the bike has been well looked after. From closer examination the frame would need stripping and replating or respraying..and I reckon that the junction of the extra stays and the down tube, with its difficult voids, would cause even the best plater a few problems.
*Item No 230454815721*
Before you leap for your cheque books, International Bank Transfer forms.or P{aypal accounts, I suggest that you might just check out for comparison's sake the elegant lady's frame that just closed on UK Ebay last night...My..how I was sorely tempted by this one..and my wife doesn't even ride a bike.
The frame *Item No 230451779336 *was a 24" Rotrax Super Course bilaminated one, with those long spearpointsm on the head and some other tubes. Of similar design to the Herse except for the extra stays, it was, to my biased eyes, far superior in every way to the Herse. It would have been very easy to have brazed on those extra stays if desired..and to have made a much better job of the joint as well.
I thought about buying it just to convert it into a gents frame, with it being so large ( I would have loved to have met the original owner)...but I already have a couple in the stable.
The frame sold for the miserly sum of £80.87 !!!..the poor seller was none other than our former List mate..the very well-informed Mick Butler...spare a thought for him.
OK..I know that the winner of the lady's Herse will get the Herse package of the chainset, cantilevers ( assuming they are the real McCoy-Herse brand) etc etc etc...So..I admit to a lack of objectivity about certain matters.
Norris Lockley
Settle UK (..but returning to France later this week, all being-well..to look for cut-price Herses )