I am sure you found hundreds on the local craigslist when you lived in Montana too. Didn't you? So quickly we forget what it is like living in the boonies.

Even here in a university town, there were no folding bikes around. Actually out of 15K or so students I think only maybe 500 of them even ride a bike. My estimate would be that there are about 100 serious riders in the spandex crowd on their $5K bikes, and maybe 20 utility type riders in town whom most consider bums or drunks that lost their drivers license. However since NC allows 49cc scooters with no tags, no insurance, and no license needed, the drunks do not ride bicycles. All the rest of the folks you see riding on the greenway trail (all 2.5 miles of it) are purely recreational/exercise riders, they usually give up in a month or so.

The point of all that is you have to drive 100-300 miles to look at a craigslist folder, and then you have no idea if it is a bargain or a piece of junk until you actually see it. If you have no experience with folding bicycles, it is just so much simpler and cheaper to just buy a cheap one off the web. Hopefully the next bike will be something that does not have the problems you find out the cheap one has.

Now if someone in NYC can not find something nice on craigslist, they were not looking very hard, but many of us live someplace like Helena.

Another point about cheap bikes. Some of us do not need to go far nor fast. If your longest trip is 5 miles, and your max speed is 15mph, buying a $1000+ bicycle is silly. From what I have seen most of the folding bikes in the $200-300 range are fine for that. Sure many of us may eventually buy a nicer bike, but it will be because we want a nicer bike not because we need one.

Oh yes, I once had one of those 19# multi-thousand-dollar bikes, I gave it away.