Idéale Catalog Entry — Competition Saddles and the No. 39

IDÉALE

No. 90-3 COMPETITION SADDLE
A new IDEALE saddle. Hand treated according to the recommendations of Daniel REBOUR. NEEDS NO
“BREAKING-IN”. The suppling is done for you in the factory before the leather top is fitted to the
frame and is the equivalent of many miles of riding without the chance of the top becoming
mis-shappen. No ordinary usage, however intensive, could produce such a suppling of every part of
the leather top. Frame of chrome plated high tensile steel, Solid copper rivets with large heads.
Patented shrouded tension screw. Patented clip No. 3, all positions. (NOTE: This saddle is made
special for No. 3 clip. The 2 wires are 32mm apart). Size: 10 1/2 x 5 3/4″. Wt. 26 oz.

No. 90-2 COMPETITION SADDLE
Same as above (90-3) saddle, but with standard No. 2 seat clip. The two wires are 38mm apart. This
saddle will fit the Campagnolo No. 1044 seat post. Wt. 25 oz.

No. 91 SWALLOW TYPE COMPETITION SADDLE
Treated leather. Complete with No. 2 seat clip. Swallow type design giving greater freedom of leg
action. Wt. 24 oz.

No. 39 SADDLE
Best butt leather top, black enamelled frame. Complete with clip. Size 10 x 5 1/2″. Wt. 22 oz.

[A single Idéale page from an American mail-order catalog, held as a cropped sheet: the ruled frame
survives on three sides but the masthead and the page number have been trimmed away, so the leaf
does not name its own publication or date.

It is filed here as a Gene Portuesi Cyclo-pedia leaf, and the evidence for that is on the page. Two
Cyclo-pedia leaves are already held in this archive, and this one shares their typewriter face,
their underlined product headings, their ounce weights and their layout of image above description.
More than that, the No. 90-3 and No. 90-2 entries are word for word the same text as the Cadillac
edition’s page 39, down to the misprint mis-shappen and the note about the 32 mm clip spacing.

It is not that page, though. The Cadillac page 39 sets the No. 91 low in its left column and gives
its right column to the Rilsan Series Racing, the No. 2000, 2001 and 2002, plus the saddle cover and
the Tan Sad carrier. This sheet has a two-column layout with the No. 90-3 and No. 90-2 on the left
and the No. 91 and the No. 39 on the right, and it carries no plastic saddles at all. The four
leather entries are the whole of it.

That absence is what dates it, within a bracket rather than to a year. It is later than the Detroit
edition also held here, which does not carry the No. 90-3 at all, and earlier than the Cadillac
edition, which adds the Rilsan range beside the same leather copy. The archive files it to the early
1970s on that reasoning, with no year recorded.

The trimming is the archive’s own inheritance rather than anything done to the sheet here, and it is
recorded rather than repaired. A reader wanting to place this leaf exactly should look for an
untrimmed copy carrying the masthead.]