Originally Posted by
jgerpheide
I have not seen another after searching the past 8 years. They are out there somewhere and perhaps less than 25 were made. Not much known about the framebuilder from the research I have done.
My new Richard Moon is frame
#8 ... (the sequence is 2 97 8) February 1997 frame 8
Brian Baylis showed me a richard moon bicycle on a visit to his shop sometime maybe in 2005 or something like that. One of the markers on that bike was the quarter-moon cutouts in the lugs which I imagine are exceedingly difficult to achieve. He said that Richard sent him all his bicycles for paint, and they were just fantastic. The only other bikes he praised so highly were from Bruce Gordon and also he was very proud of his flying scott, which he painted pink! When Brian Baylis says your bikes are fantastic, that's really something crazy!
Richard Moon hand-cut lug
(source: ClassicRendezvous website).
I believe that Richard Moon was an engineer who retired and decided to make some bicycles "for fun". There was no way to recover all the time and money he put into building bicycles - this was a labor of love for Richard Moon, which is why he only built bikes for a few years and then quit to do other things. So these bicycles even more rare than Mario Confente (Masi USA's top builder from the 70's who died tragically of heart failure in his 30's) bicycles, of which he built ~135, and even more difficult to find because they are not as widely recognized!
- Don Gillies
Palo Alto, CA