surreal

Greetings, David Newton.

I suspect you inferred some stuff from my post. I apologize.

I'm not 20; i'm 33. I chose my BF handle back when i was 25, and i remain immature to this day. Now that we've got that out of the way, i wasn't trying to suggest that flipping specifically, or making money in general, is evil. I'm just curious as to why ppl flip, given that when you take into account drive time, grease, labor, any parts that aren't readily found in the bin, and the initial outlay, it can't be very profitable. I tend to buy only bikes that i think are keepers; if i'm wrong about fit or just the feel of a bike, i'll sell it if it's worth a few bills. If it's not got a lot of value, i usually end up giving it away, or parting it out. Gotta keep that parts bin stocked.

However, as some ppl have gone into in this thread, flipping does have an impact on supply and demand. Rehabbing trash-picked bikes is good for the environment. Reduce, re-use, recycle, blahblahblah. But, buying cheap ish on CL and at yard sales, just to give it a cursory tune-up and resell it, is quite another thing. This does kind of drive up the perceived demand of bikes, and it also drives up the average selling price, as flippers tend to know how to promote a bike effectively and get a good price.

In my early twenties, i learned a bit about bikes and charity by ritually trash-picking bikes from an affluent town nearby, making them serviceable, and giving them to ppl we knew who needed them. Basically, it was like a tiny little co-op that was "run" by my roommate asnd I, and we worked drunk on our own time. Yes, it was usually singlespeed conversions, low-buck, of entry-level bike-boom era bikes, often of the sort that were purchased in bike shops. Oh, the mixtes we found! Mostly given to girls from Japan. Nothing spectacular, but the kind of ish that brings $75 on CL these days. We gave them to the guy who ridesaround washing windows for cash, and to exchange students, and to friends of friends. Would it have been wrong to flip them instead? No. But i'm glad we did what we did.

I enjoyed doing all that stuff, more for the learning experience than for any altruism. And, the state of some of those bikes, i'd have felt bad to have taken money for them. But, now that i can turn a wrench a bit, i don't want to waste time and effort in an attempt to gain a tiny profit. That's just me, and most ppl who've responded to this thread seem to be in it for honorable reasons, without any significant delusions.

I'm just curious about the whole lifestyle, and how it causes the same folks to low-ball everything on the "appraisals" sub-forum to try to get a decent price for old bikes they acquired cheaply.

-rob