What Price History?

meagain

Two grand? I don't think so (and I am by th'education an historian!).

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... otohosting

GaryGkn

Nice looking bike. It looks strong and comfortable with braze ons for mudguards. Somebody should make a modern 631 version.

gkerr4

looks like a rusty pile of junk to me!

peejay78

this bike is a piece of rusty old cack.

no-one in the right mind would ever buy it.

Pullman1937

I think you will find this is The Old Bicycle Company selling this. I found them expensive for parts and postage to be too expensive to even consider as an option.

Interesting that the seller chose ebay:-

http://www.theoldbicycle.co.uk/forum/in ... auction.pl

NorwegianBlue

It's a classic example of the chancers you see all the time on ebay. If the seller really thought it was worth that much they would have started it much, much lower. They don't think enough people (i.e. more than one) will be interested enough to bid it up, they're just hoping one fool will be fished in.

A fool, reading the description quickly, could infer that the bike had more than the most tenuous connections with le Tour. Surely anybody who was considering parting with a couple of grand would notice that it is a replica. There's a large file on Fontan, but no actual provenance for the bike itself, another common sales trick and one you often see at classic car auctions.

Even if it is one of the commemorative bikes, how can the seller be sure it's all original without good provenance? And how can we be so sure that the commerative bikes weren't just a cynical ploy to cash in on a rider's success? Of course the original bikes would have been sold as exact replicas, but we all know that many manufacturers have badged up pretty average bikes as replicas of some famous rider's mount.

Oh and finally, how can one of a series of replicas be "unique"? Ahem!