Craigslist - Meat on the Bone?

[jerrykr]

Since we seem to be on a CL jag tonight, here's a question I've been meaning to ask for awhile now.

As little as 6 months ago, I always seemed to be able to find bikes on CL listed at a price that I knew that I could buy and re-sell that was worth my time and trouble.

My "time and trouble" limit is usually 50-100% profit. ex: buy at $50 sell at $75-100 - or whatever number.

lately, on the DFW listings I can't find anything that I don't consider already priced at the top - no" meat on the bone".

Did everybody suddenly get smarter, or did they all start watching Pickers, or did used bike prices suddenly go up? :shock:

I'm not talking collector bikes, just regular old 10 speeds or good looking dept. store MTBs that everyone has sitting around in the way in their garage.

My only source seems to have been changed to Garage Sales.

How's things where you live?

 

[Walker]

Summer happened.

 

[outskirtscustoms]

Same here, there hasn't been anything even reasonable here. Normally I keep my eyes on the scrapyards, trash piles, junkers, yard sales, flea markets, and second hand stores. Then I post the cheapest bikes on Craigslist and sell them every time.

 

[jackdaw]

My town dump got all worried about liability, now the scrap/trash guy can't bring me bikes anymore :x

 

[sleepy]

That certainly seems to be the case here, actually outrageous asking prices.....maybe it is due to summer.

 

[sensor]

dont know about craigslist but i can tell my lbs is insanely busy and has been for 2 months when they are normally a ghost town....so id say its that fact that its summer so people think they want to ride a bike(but then youll see the same stuff for less again around thanksgiving time :lol: )

 

[dos cruiser]

Summer, gas prices and everybody thinks they can flip a bike. Most don't even do any work to them.

 

[Rat Rod]

Another issue in the DFW area is all of the active flippers we have now.

When I started buying and selling bikes about 7-8 years ago there were only one or two other people flipping bikes at the time and they were down in Oak Cliff...a guy named Fred and another guy named Arturo. I had a pretty good run for a year or two and I actually fixed the bikes up that I found and made them as good as new.

Now I think 50% of the bikes out there are people flipping them. They list 5-10 bikes at any given time and fill up the list every day. Most of them aren't even washing the bikes let alone making them roadworthy.

I also believe that a good majority of these bikes are probably stolen because many of them are being bought at flea markets. You can't tell me that some of these high end road bikes and MTBs that are found at the flea market were just garage sale bikes that people decided to give away to some nice lady who can't speak any English. :roll:

Those same flippers have driven the prices way up on stuff too. People do a quick search and see what other folks are selling stuff for and then list accordingly.

 

[outskirtscustoms]

Summer, gas prices and everybody thinks they can flip a bike. Most don't even do any work to them.

Guilty as charged, 9 times out of 10, I find bikes at the scrapyard and they don't need anything but air in the tires, buy at scrap price and turn a quick buck. Or I buy bikes from the flea market for $20-$40 and sell for $50-$100. Double my money without doing anything but dragging them home and posting them. :mrgreen:

If you can make money by someone else under-pricing their item what would I tell them it's worth more? Buy it and flip it. Or keep it and tell people what a good deal I got on it. :wink: