Ah, one of those... like a Stradivarius bass.
I ran into an "H.R. Pfretzschner" on the Net before Christmas. It looked strange. Being the powerful and important man I am, I sent three bass players to check it out, one of which already owns three Pfretzschners. This one was strange, as it clearly wasn't what we usually associate with a Pfretzschner; it had a very low tip and was somewhere inbetween German and French, and had a rather clumsy brass peg. I HAVE heard that Pretzschner's early bass bows weren't what they later became - which isn't very surprising considering that he was something of a pioneer of the modern German bow - and it was indeed most similar to the earliest of the three bows they brought. They said it seemed to make a decent sound, but it needed work, and I wasn't very interested in spending my money on what wasn't necessarily a real H.R.P., so I let that one go. I'd still like to know whether it was real or not, though...