Originally Posted by
hikerinmaine
All great ideas, but one other thing to keep in mind is to head to the more affluent section of town for the yard sales. They buy the higher end bikes and treat them like trash, so they don't mean much. I bought my Cannondale Black Lightning off a guy driving a Range Rover, talked him down from $65 to $50 because the tires were flat and he couldn't air them up. It hadn't been ridden in years so to him it was just some old bike, when was like new when I washed the years of dust off it.
+1 to above, in particular to their children trashing their personal property, particularly when it's nouveau riche, but you have to let the head honcho think they are "master of the universe," or deal with their spouse.
Then there is my friend's wealthy 90 year old mom on the Cape, old money without grand kids, who is for the most part immobile, but won't part with anything, including her 3 speed Rudge and her 1970's Mercedes sedan, not driven in over a decade, unfortunately
not a 280 SE cabriolet.
Occasionally, church/temple, and community wide garage sales are fruitful. Some towns have police sales too.
I find it interesting that
Michigan State University is hawking abandoned bikes on
Lansing Craigslist, at "retail" prices.
But what strikes me the oddest are these patient flippers/sellers, other than BBC,who have been trying to sell their wares for two years or more, with nary a change in price. Here are a pair of NJ
Peugeots, not PX10's, been up since at least 2011. That's $899 each for BIN.