Does a bare Herse rando frame and fork really possess any intrinsic economic worth at all though if it will cost far more to properly kit out than the finished bike that results? Who on earth would buy one unless they were sitting on a pile of correct parts, and why?
Kurt Sperry Bellingham WA USA
On 7/15/07, joel metz <magpie@blackbirdsf.org> wrote:
>
> i think part of the issue were running into there is that its a sale
> by a highly experienced seller of herse and other french bits - who
> knows that:
>
> a) most herse sales on ebay end up going to japan, for quite tasty prices
>
> b) many of those bikes (at least so i am told) get parted out there,
> and taken from original build condition to super-blinged-out herse
> build.
>
> c) theres plenty of herse collectors over there who are looking for
> herse parts to complete their super-bling herse.
>
> this is how grant has operated for the past 15 years or more - he
> knows the parts are worth more separate from the bike than attached
> to it, and he knows the odds of the bikes staying together as
> originally built are about 50/50.
>
> not to mention that, as it is, we dont know that this was a complete
> bike to start with. i know that oftimes grant finds bikes like this
> incomplete, and its a hop skip and a jump from selling an incomplete,
> but original bike, to selling the parts individually. in my
> experience, he typically keeps bikes that he finds as complete bikes
> in the state theyre found, but if its a partial bike, hell part it
> out, knowing, as i mentioned, that thats whats going to happen
> anyhow...
>
> grants one of the people who first really turned me on to what we now
> refer to as the french constructeurs a decade and a half ago, and ive
> had a couple convos with him about this, and he does get miffed about
> complete original bikes being broken up and blinged out (as are more
> than a few of the bikes in the new cycling rene herse book - bikes he
> sold, and that i remember seeing in their original build) - but in
> the end, figures, i think, that if anyone is going to make money off
> the (near-inevitable) parting-out, it may as well be him...
>
> -joel