MAGNUM BOGUS 4

The following frame was offered at ebay.co.uk in Sept 2006. It was re-offered in January 2007. The seller made the following claim:

"This frameset was purchased by me new, several years ago. ... I am advised this is an early Yorkshire (Jackson) built frame, the serial number on the bottom bracket is 6186, suggesting 1986 as the year of manufacture."

Jackson frame numbers did not follow this format; from 1986, Jackson-numbered frames bore numbers starting 86xxx, five-digits, year first, production sequence last. Moreover, Jackson didn't make 61 Hetchins frames in 1986 (they'd have turned hand-springs if they had!). Neither does 6186 fit into the pattern for a 1960s frame (i.e., 1961, 86th frame) because that system started in 1962 not 1961. Moreover, 1962 frames started with 2, not 62. 1961 frames bore five-digit numbers starting with H2, not 61. 6186 might suggest a 1966 year of production, but 186 frames for that year is not likely; Alf would have been turning handsprings to have sold that many in that period. In short, this is not a valid serial number for any period; not a valid Hetchins frame number anyway.

David Miller saw the ebay offering and had the following to say about it: "Here's a conundrum of a frame for sale! I'm positive Jackson's didn't build it and it certainly isn't a Bonum. Yet the owner says he bought it new, several years ago! So he should have the paperwork confirming where it came from. Highly suspicious. Regards, David [Miller]"

Below are fotos of the frame as offered, with commentary by the Editor.

Seat stay curve too high up.
Chain stay curve looks better.

Columbus droput?
Highly unlikely on a 1980s Hetchins.

Note st ornament;
not seen, except on
Harry Butler's forgeries.

This lug pattern is Nulli Secundus, not Mag. Bonum as claimed. Maybe the owner misremembered the name; more likely he was misinformed by the original seller. In any case, the last Nulli on the register was sold in Dec 1967. So a mid-1980s date for this frame is off by nearly 20 years. The builder probably cobbled the lugs together from leftover bits. Note the recessed allen bolt fixture for the front brake; this is anachronistic for 1986, though, I grant, the present owner might have had it drilled out. Note the long tang on the fork crown; this long tang is not usually seen with either Nulli or Mag. Bonum lugs. It has however been seen on other Harry Butler forgeries. Granted, long tangs were sometimes fitted to various models; in August 2006, for example, a 1970s Spyder (blue/white) was offered at ebay with long fork tangs. So long fork tangs alone would not disqualify the frame, provided all the rest of the details (incl. serial number) were correct. In the case of the blue/white Spyder, they were. Here the other details aren't correct and instead fit into a pattern we have seen before from a certain Yorkshire dealer of forged frames.

Here's the clincher: the bb shell doesn't fit the stays. Why? Because the bb shell is decades out of sync with the stays; it is a modern shell designed for modern oval-round stays not the old-style pencil stays actually fitted. (Hetchins changed over to oval-round stays in about 1981, and changed bb shells accordingly). In this case, the builder has contrived a sleeve to reduce the size of the bb sockets. You can clearly see the step and lining on it. Not Hetchins.

This frame appears to be a "bitser": a frame cobbled together from separate bits which don't belong together and never did. This is a jumble sale, not a Hetchins.

In the opinion of this Editor, the frame was made by Harry Butler (Yorkshire) and passed off to an unsuspecting buyer as a genuine Hetchins. My condolences. I accept the ebay seller's claim that he bought and re-sold in good faith. Harry Butler is a well-known purveyor of bogus frames, not only bogus Hetchins. He will tell you he can 'get' you anything, Baines, Bates, Holdsworth, Paris, whatever. If he can't get it, he simply makes it (has it made) new and sells it as if it were original. He has been warned by Hetchins before; so far as we know, we are not seeing new bogus Hetchins, but old stock Butler made up in the 1980s and 1990s.

This is an instructive case, for it shows that the MO ii is not the only model which has been forged.

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