[CR] Last photos of THE most famous Rene Herse bike

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From: <stronglight49@aol.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:45:23 -0500
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
Subject: [CR] Last photos of THE most famous Rene Herse bike


A few months ago I had posted some enhanced images which I'd made of Daniel Rebour's famous illustration of a Rene Herse bike. This was the bike which Rebour had used as an example of the ideal randonneur style cycle - as of 1949 when his book was published.

Well, to my surprise, a friend recently gave me his old printed copies showing the bike as it was last sold (at auction, April 2005). It had changed hands from a well known San Francisco collector and seller of French touring bikes (now apparently withdrawn from the bike business), to a notable Japanese collector - eBay name "allvitluxe". Winning bid was $3,500, with a total of 24 bids placed.

My friend had lost his original copied photo image files from the auction, and my own had also vanished when my old PC had died. So, what I have posted here are regrettably rather poor quality (scanned off of his grainy plain paper copies, made from a low quality old color printer). But, the details of this famous bike are of course timeless and well worth preserving and sharing, nonetheless. I included his scan of the auction description which tells of the later modifications made to the frameset by the original owner. I assume the changes were also completed by Herse prior to the last re-paint of the frameset.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stronglight/sets/72157618749510933/detail/

BOB HANSON, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO, USA