Stadjer

Could be, but this one hasn't vintage status yet. Seller initially wanted 175 euro's for it a couple of months ago, and I didn't think that was unreasonable just for the quality of the bike as a means of transport, but rarity makes the price and after no one made a bid for 2 months he realized it was much too young for that price. If I walk out my front door there are about a 100 bikes parked in a stretch of 100 yards in front of the student housing next door, and about 20 of them are of the same generation, and even one is the same brand in the same seventies colour. In far worse conditon and without the rod brakes, but still a very usuable bike, and in the underground parking lot of my own appartment block there's a brown seventies bike from a different brand.

Even if you have 30's bike in good condition that will last another 50 years and is relatively rare because a lot of bikes went to Germany during the war you're not going to get 400 euro's for it, because a serious collector knows that after the Wall Street Crash of '29 manufacterers started cutting corners... I'd really like to say that the Dutch bike industry did a lot of excting innovations, and they did have a lot of different truss frames and came up with different technical solutions in the drive train, but I'm afraid most innovation and advertisement until the 70's was about paint jobs and quality of alloys, "guaranteed rustfree" and stuff like that, durability was the selling point. The truss frames, suspension frames, bakers bikes with original wooden crate, 3-speed kick back gearboxes, cycloid ball bearing bikes are collectible, but the ordinary diamond frame roadster or 'oma' was just too durable to get rare within a century.

I'm very happy with my bike, but it's not like it has attracted any attention at all. I told my friends I rode it 30 km's home, and they asked how my injured ankle did hold up, not about the bike. It's got a flat on the rear now, the old rubber of the tube appearantly cracked at the edge of the valve stem. The rear wheel has never been out and I'm going to change the inner tube without taking it out also, because the drive train is better left alone unless it's really necessary. I'm never going to get it back in as good as it is now, these drivetrains are made to maintain, taking apart shouldn't be necessary unless it has been run over by a truck or something.