I do not have a wish list or a grail bike. I have got every bike I could possibly ever need, and there certainly isn't a hole in my collection that needs to be filled.
However ...
I have a soft spot for small - and to most people obscure - brands that have an interesting back story, so I do find myself still buying stuff every now and then. Especially if it's cheap.
This is the latest frame I could not resist, a rather tatty Van Rossem:
Joop van Rossem is a former racer who opened a shop in The Hague in the early 1970's. He set out to become a frame builder and consulted some of the best builders of the day, such as Jasper Bouma and Ugo de Rosa to try and learn the tricks of the trade. Whether he actually built many frames I don't yet know, but he did become the Dutch importer for De Rosa, and his shop became locally famous for its high quality racing machines.
The best known Van Rossem is the one used by Keetie Hage in Munich in 1978 to beat the world hour record:
The frame I bought came from Martens of Zevezele, Belgium, by the looks of it. Very nicely made and my size to boot:
Filled another hole I didn't know I had.
