Giving Up "Reselling" Bikes

[wheelhorseman]

Over the past year i have gotten lots of bikes and many were free. Most were kids bikes and many were in pretty good condition. My main focus is muscle bikes which i rarely find and are very scarce. I usaully strip the kids bikes for the 20 in. tubes/tires feflectors and such and give the scrap to a neighbor. I had a few nice kids bikes in assorted sizes that were too nice to destroy. Tried selling them for 10.00 each and no takers. Then tried 5 bucks apiece and still no takers. Next tried putting them on CL for free....STILL NO TAKERS. Ended up taking them to our local Haven of Rest thrift store. Went back to the store a few days later and they were still there.

I am not giving up getting very cheap or free bikes just not going to pick up for resale. Will be very choosy from now on about what is coming home. Unless its something i can justify for parts or a project i wont go get it. Seems that kids just dont ride bikes anymore although Walmart has 200 of them in stock at Christmas time and i cant give them away.

 

[Tommy Atoms]

Alot of them are to busy staring at the 4 inch screens. I also noticed alot of young people do not know how to speak to each other anymore. I do not understand how they will function in the real world. Nowadays if kids are interested in my freakbikes I make sure to stop and let them check them out. Maybe they will get interested and go out in thier garage and make something out of they're old bikes.

 

[wheelhorseman]

Where i live it is very very rare to see anyone on a bicycle. Kids are too busy with electronic devices As a kid growing up in the seventies and early eighties my bike was my lifeline. After getting off the bus and a quick clothes change we were out the door on a bike headed to a friends or to meet up and go riding. Man how things have changed. Thank God for memories.

What kinds of memories are todays kids gonna look back at?? At least people my age (40s) have classic tv and music to remember. To me the days of a "classic" anything are gone and thats scary.

 

[kingfish254]

Sorry to hear that buddy. Sales are still good here, but I know it that bike markets vary from town to town.

 

[Bicycle808]

You might want to check with local schools, local churches, and put up some flyers that you're giving away working kids' bikes to children in need? I guarantee, somewhere close by, there are kids who come from families that cannot afford electronic bullcrap, and would possibly/probably appreciate some free wheels.

But, yeah, kids' bikes are the most plentiful and least desirable bikes out there. The local co-op will no longer even accept kids' bikie donations, unless it's something collectible or a "real" bmx bike, so they can sell it for fundraising purposes. All the "normal" kids' bikes are refused. It's a danged shame.

 

[mikeeebikey]

I live it daily, the kids do not want to go outside. They want to internet.
I finally got so tired of the kid controlling my riding i bought a tag-a-long. After about 3 times of his buddies seeing him, he decided 8 might be a good age to learn bicycles.
My daughter is 14 and not so bad, she enjoys cycling, just don't ask her to go more than about 2 miles....
I used to ride, 2-3 hours daily, and more. Now I old and don't get to so much, 1-2 times a week.

 

[wheelhorseman]

I have tried every trick in the book to sell bicycles including trying to sell in a group lot dirt cheap (like 5 bikes for 20.00) and that never works. Took months to get rid of my West Coast chopper and Cycocycle. Razor scooters wont fetch a dime. Just gava away an old 26in. rideable cruiser because i couldnt even get a phone call for the 10 buck asking price.

 

[Ichoptop]

there are several non-profits that would be happy to get your bikes working or not (say tax write off). One stockpiles bikes in a warehouse and once a month all us mechanics show up and see how many bikes we can go through and turn out in a day. There is no better feeling than delivering 50 bikes in my enclosed trailer to a church before Christmas and having each kid that needs one go home with one.

 

[mitchelangelo]

what part of SC wheelhorseman? I am always interested in reasonable cruisers!

 

[55ColumbiaBuilt]

My daughter brought home several friends from college. I offered up my "fleet" if they wanted to ride. Two of them told me that they never learned to ride. They grew up in communities where parents didn't want their kids going too far from home for their own safety. It's interesting because these kids go to the same college as my daughter, and she uses this as her campus comuter. How do THEY get around?

 

[froggy99]

There does seem to be a paradym shift in the last couple of generations. I was however shocked that some college age kids didn't know how to ride bikes. The bicycle for me was the first taste of freedom and pride of ownership. Kids today seem to be more into electronic devices and here is the disconnect for me. They know how to use them but know very little of how they work. There are very few if any kids "modding" a cell phone or waxing poetic over a laptop. I don't think in 20 years they'll be a rat rod computer site with commodor 64s running "old" 4g wifi and pentium 4. (hey that mite be cool)There will however always be a place for poeple of action and who can actually fix things or make things. So take heart, our hobby is alive and well. There r many "um" older enthusiasts but also many younger up and comers to carry on the torch.

 

[Sinner4]

I gave up on the kids bikes as well. I traded 20 BMX bikes for ONE Mountain Bike last summer, and donated another 20 to the local bike co-op. So I still have 200 or so adult bikes left. I have rebuild 20 or so for resale this summer. Sold 5 so far, MTB's and 2 road bikes. From not till I'm done, I have 20 or so road bikes to rebuild. They will sell like hot cakes. The kids bikes, the kids are not the ones buying them, the parents are and they only like to shell out the money for them self.

 

[dragnusa]

I usually have about 20 ride able bikes at any given time, so me and my son ride different ones all the time and that has boosted my sales some. I try not to mess with little bikes because they just arent worth the time I still keep some around in case a friend needs one but I dont work on them to sale in general.

 

[kickback]

Kids in my area don't ride bikes maybe it is texting,twitter and such. I have two kids 14&15 now they don't ride them for transportation or just for fun. We take family rides every now and then or to the beach and ride some of my Muscle bikes and I think they like all of the response that we get riding them. We can't get very far until someone stops us to tell us cool bikes or that they had one as a kid.

 

[vintagebuilt]

I hear you. As a kid 99% of us rode our bikes to school and then on weekends when parents told us to beat it. Now I live next to two downhill mtb resorts and the best xc trails, and I am totally baffled when someone says they never learned to ride. what the? huh? It's like they just said something in chinese.

 

[charliechaindrive]

Here, we really like riding our bikes. But if it's not a 20 inch, and it didn't cost over 250$ it's pretty much non existent. all the bikes in staples, are sunday's, subrosa's, sputnik's, we the people, specialized, stolen's and some kink's. One time my friend threw away his 15$ a pop odyssey pegs because they had flash rusted when he left his bike outside overnight. That, I really really did not understand. It seems like, if something gets even the tiniest amount of corrosion, the ninny's in town panic and go buy brand new stuff off danscomp. Then, a person like me can get the old parts for peanuts.

One time I had.brought one of my rat bikes into town, and they all looked at me like I was, well, riding a gigantic spider or something! Just a look of complete horror on their faces. I was then bombarded by questions, "how doesn't that thing fall in half?" Or "that thing must be like over 100 years old!" When I was just on my columbia 3 star..

 

[vintagebuilt]

I even had one guy who literally lived in his van tell me he would never give his kids someting that wasn't new.

Whaaaaaaaaat? THat's insane! Good points in your reply.

 

[wheelhorseman]

I went by the thrift store today and every bike i gave them a week ago was still there along with a couple of others that were there before mine.


This old cruiser i gave them is rideable as is just rusty. I couldnt even get 5 bucks for it and they have it priced at 30.00. I told the sales lady that the bike wasnt worth 10 bucks on a good day. Her reply.."Someone will buy it eventually". What i dont understand is CL is jammed full of high end expensive bikes all the time. Whos buying them?? I have never met anyon e who would pay over 50.00 for ANY bike In my area a bike is a bike and names like Cannondale..Gary Fisher etc. mean nothing . Nobody is going to give you but a few bucks for it because in their eyes its a used bicycle regardless of the name.

 

[DIABLO67]

When I was a kid the greatest thing to have was a bike. It was your freedom, a ticket to new areas still undiscovered by you. We would spraybomb them, change wheels, trade parts with other kids, it was a natural thing to do. Now a days kids are more interested in the newest phone and not riding. They have many more choices and options as to what "toy" they will love. Einstein once said that the technology of the future will make idiots of the human race. I believe that's starting to be the case unfortunately.
Here in Raleigh we are blessed with awesome greenways where parents take their kids and show them the love of bikes. I agree the market is flooded with cheap bikes, but there are those few parents who love the fact that their child can ride something they rode as kids. I built some nice little customs for my nieces as their Christmas gifts. They were very happy and were boasting that, "no one else has a bike like mine!"
Bottom line for me is that if you can't give them away as a regular bike, make it a custom, or turn all the extra parts into a sculpture, or piece of furniture. Repurpose the bike and make it something "new" again. I'm sorry to hear you can't give kids a free bike, if they only knew what an awesome gift you're trying to give to them.

Roly...

 

[CRASH]

As a parent of young kids I let them ride only when I or my wife is with them. My oldest, 12, can ride alone if a friend is with him. The sad truth is that this is a more dangerous world with more sickos and violence out there then when we grew up. And while I want my kids ot have freedom, I don't want them liberated from me in a van and take off to be killed.