Jan: In most circumstances I wouldn't respond to your posting, and, alt hough I don't know you, I gather as the editor of a cycling publicat ion, you are a person to be taken seriously. My original posting was in response to a well framed question regarding the outcomes of two sales on eBay, one of a Masi, and the other of a Herse racing bike; the Herse built after Herse's death by Desbois.
Although you are somehow constrained in commenting about the demand and value of bicycles, the collecting public is not. There were 26 bids for the Masi and 1 bid for the Herse. The demand for Masi racing bicycles has always been stronger than that f or Herse racing bicycles and I suspect that trend will continue. In fa ct, I believe that whatever prices have been paid recently for Herse r acing bicycles is only light reflected from the demand and value of his touring bikes. There can be no question that the fact that the Herse in question was no t built by Herse, nor in Herse's lifetime, but by Desbois, a man who, whatever his virtues, is and was practically unknown, also a ffected the outcome of this sale. That having been said, I find some of the Herse racing bikes interesti ng as collectibles and recently made an attempt to buy one. Unfortunat ely, its owner had a higher opinion of its value than the public or my self-it was not sold. Cordially, George
George Hollenberg MD
Westport, CT, USA
Date: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 11:56 am Subject: Re: [CR] pink René Herse vs. Masi Pres tige To: gholl@optonline.net Cc: Classic Rendezvous
> At 10:46 PM +0000 9/17/07, gholl@optonline.net wrote:
>
> >Certainly the fact that the Masi was built by Alberto Masi and
> the Herse
> > was a posthumous production by another hand must had some
> influence in
> >the outcome. It certainly influenced me--not to bid on the Hers
e.
> >George
> >George Hollenberg MD
> >Westport, CT, USA
>
> I haven't followed this thread, so I don't know whether we kno
w
> for
> sure that the Masi was built by Alberto, or whether it could
> have
> been farmed out to some contract builder. We do know that the
> Herse
> was made by Jean Desbois, because he made all the 1980s bikes.
> There
> were too few orders to warrant hiring another builder.
>
> While I cannot comment on the values of the bikes - Bicycle
> Quarterly
> does not publish price guides - I have to take issue with the
> assertion that a Desbois-built Herse somehow isn't a true Herse,
> while an Alberto-built Masi is a true Masi.
>
> If Jean Desbois had changed his name to "Jean Herse" when he
> married
> Lyli, would that have changed things? Desbois was one of the
> first
> workers hired by Herse less than a year after he opened shop. He
> worked under Rene Herse for more than a decade - the years when
> the
> best Herse bikes were built. When business turned down in the
> mid-1950s, he left. He returned around 1970, when Herse needed
> somebody to take over more and more responsibility as his health
> was
> failing. Desbois' pay records show that he was paid more than
> the
> others working at the shop in the 1940s. (Desbois tells the
> story
> that Narcisse wanted to hire him, and offered to double the pay.
> That
> forced Herse to match the offer.) Basically, many of the early
> Herse
> bikes, as well as quite a few of the 1970s bikes, have frames
> built
> by Desbois.
>
> Then there is Lyli's involvement in the "post-Rene" Herse shop
.
> She
> was the owner of the shop, not Jean Desbois. Lyli had worked at
> the
> shop continuously since the mid-1940s... and she is the daught
er
> of
> the builder. So truthfully, a 1980s bike would be a "Lyli Hers
e"
> built by Jean Desbois, while a 1940s or a 1970s bike could be a
> "Rene
> Herse" built by Jean Desbois.
>
> From what I have heard, the connection between Faliero and
> Alberto
> Masi is a lot more muddled, with Faliero's California venture
> and
> Alberto making bikes in Italy without Faliero's blessing. Or are
> those just rumors? What if Mario Confente had lived longer, and
> had
> taken over Masi, rather than build under his own name? Would the
> bikes not be considered "true" Masis, or bikes built from a
> "posthumous" production by another hand?
>
> In fact, how much does it matter who built the bike? A 1960s
> Herse,
> which Mike Schmidt would have pegged (probably correctly) at a
> higher
> value, would have been built by a builder with much less
> association
> to the Herse family - as far as I can tell, none of Herse's
> 1960s
> builders stayed more than a decade, but I'll have to do more
> research
> to make sure. And who built the quite valuable 1960s Cinellis anyh
ow?
>
> In the end, for me the quality of the workmanship and design is
> more
> important than the mystique and family connections. And the two
> Desbois-built Herse bikes I have ridden were absolutely top-
> notch in
> both respects.
>
> Disclaimer: I know Jean Desbois quite well, so I may be biased
> in my
> assessment.
>
> Jan Heine
> Editor
> Bicycle Quarterly
> 140 Lakeside Ave #C
> Seattle WA 98122
> http://www.bikequarterly.com
>
George Hollenberg MD
CT, USA